


earning a place

by softspiderlad



Series: to build a family [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF May Parker, BAMF Peter Parker, BAMF Tony Stark, F/M, Harley Keener is a Good Boyfriend, M/M, Mentions Injury, Protective Harley Keener, Protective Peter Parker, Protective Tony Stark, Rogue Avengers Redemption, Tony Stark Acting as Harley Keener's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, after some bullshittery tho, all the parents tell steve off and its greay, bucky deserves the world and i will give it to him, harley and peter are so ooey gooey and i love them, miles morales is babey, minor internalized homophobia (mr steve raised in the 30s rogers), ned and mj are great friends, peter ALSO tells steve off and its the BEST, peter parker is healing from a near death experience, steve and nat are very confused, the rogues return, tony also tells steve off and its even better, tony is protective of his family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2020-10-31 20:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20800709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softspiderlad/pseuds/softspiderlad
Summary: After almost two years, the rest of the runaway Avengers are back, confined to house arrest at Stark Tower until further notice. However, Tony has a family now, one that he'll do anything to keep safe, and it doesn't take long to realize that nothing is the same as it once was.Or, a sort of "five times the rogues (mostly just steve and nat) didn't feel welcome by tony's new family and the one time they did" but with the first chapter as an intro instead of one of the five times.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so this is technically a 5+1 fic but the first chapter is just a sort of intro for the 5+1 (though i guess you can call it a 6+1 because of the scene with the rogues and harley and peter but i'm not counting it so eh). which is also why the first chapter is only 5k words instead of the 8k+ that i try to have my chapters be. and also there will be a lot of vagues references to the first three fics so i recommend reading those first, however the only one you really NEED to read is when healing hurts, because peter's recovering from a very severe near death experience that happened in that one shot and without reading it you will not really understand what the hell is wrong with him.
> 
> anyway! welcome to part four of this mess of a series that i'm thinking of changing the name of! i called it the defining a hero series because it was gonna be a character study mostly on tony and peter (bc irondad and spiderson content has been my saving grace ever since endgame came out) but then i changed it all and made it a parkner series but never thought of a better name for it. so yeah i might change the name of the series but i honestly dont know what to change it to so who fuckin knows lads.

**THE RUNAWAY EX-VENGERS SET TO RETURN THIS WEEK**

written by DENISE PORTER

_As I’m sure all of us know, we are closing in on the second anniversary of what press and the public have called the modern day superhero Civil War. For those who have never seen the news or looked online at any point ever, let me summarize what happened:_

_Shit went down, and Captain America went crazy._

_Not really, it was obviously more complicated than that, involving the Accords and disagreement and a battle within the Avengers over what was and was not the right thing to do. Since then, Captain America and his team is misfits have been wanted fugitives around the globe, while Tony Stark and the Avengers who stayed worked with the UN to negotiate making changes on parts that felt unfit and not all that fair. Government officials have tried to stay quiet about this ordeal, but Stark has been an open book about all things related to the Avengers and the Accords the entire time, giving public statements and updates on the progress being made, as well as things that they were still struggling with. About two and a half months ago, Stark made another statement claiming that almost all negotiations had been dealt with, and the new version of the Accords should be made public once they got the last of it ironed out._

_Since then, any other news on this issue has been small and mostly insignificant, and from Stark, radio silence—until earlier today, when he held a press conference to announce that the fugitive Avengers have been pardoned, contacted and brought up to speed on the new Accords, and have agreed to sign. He also said that they would be returning come this Friday, where they will be placed on a general house arrest for an undetermined amount of time, more of a precaution until the UN feels they are trustworthy again. However, their house arrest will be held at Stark Tower, because, according to Stark, “New York seems like a beacon for trouble, and if something happens and we need them for an emergency, they’ll already be in the city.”_

_Public opinion about this news is up in the air. As it stands, the American people aren’t sure if the Ex-vengers can be trusted, but on the other hand, having the Avengers feels like a safety blanket being placed over the world again. My question, however, is this:_

_After a break up like that, how are the Avengers planning to work together and be a team again?_

_I don’t know about anyone else, but after that explosive of a break up, I can’t see either side being able to go back to being the way they were, but maybe they’ll surprise us. At this point, I think we’re all just hoping that, whatever goes down, it’s not as damaging as it was last time—seeing Tony Stark look a light breeze away from bursting into tears for at least three months was heartbreaking, to say the least._

_Hit us up on any of our social media platforms and let us know what you think!_

* * *

The thought has been there for a while now, the lingering question, the uncertainty. Ever since they heard on the news that Tony was working with the UN to negotiate the more unfair aspects of the accords, they’ve been wondering what that meant for them—if they would get to go home, what it would be like if they did. Together, Steve, Nat, Sam, and Wanda (though Wanda was usually going off on her own, meeting with Vision in unknown places and not getting back to them for weeks at a time) would ponder how it would go, imagined anything from warm hugs and tears and profuse apologies, to thrown punches and yelling and pure anger.

This was not what they expected.

As soon as the three of them step into Stark Tower, which has been cleared out of employees for the day, along with the entire block being closed off to avoid press and unwanted attention, two things happen. First, a teenage boy, looking to be around sixteen or seventeen, steps in front of them with his arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed into a judgmental, scrutinizing sort of half-glare, brows twitching together, then up, then together again. Before the three rogues can react, another teenager steps into the room, though this one is not nearly as defensive, has a pair of dark sunglasses on his nose and a brown box in his hands labeled _kitchen stuff,_ his lower lip jutted out in a childish looking pout.

“Um.” Steve looks over at Nat, brows raised high. She just shrugs. “May we… help you…?”

The first teen cocks his head slightly to the side, scans over them for a moment, then abruptly turns towards the second teenager and simply states, “They look like douche bags.”

The second teen splutters, eyes hidden by the glasses, though his brows are visible when they shoot up to his hairline. “Harley, we literally _just_ talked about this, like, an hour ago.”

“I’m just being honest,” Harley shrugs, a wide grin stretching over his features. “You know I’m right.”

“You’re being rude, which is exactly what Mister Stark said not to do. Actually, now that I think about it, I think he said to avoid them entirely, so we should probably just go upstairs before he gets mad at us. Plus, this box is heavy and I still don’t have my full strength back, so—”

That seems to grab Harley’s attention as he quickly scrambles over to the other teen and takes the box from him, eyes wide and worried. “Why didn’t you start with that? Jesus, Peter, Dr. Cho said to take it easy, you shouldn’t have grabbed a heavy box in the first place! Does anything hurt? Headache? Ribs? Anything?”

The second teen—Peter—shakes his head with a small little smile. “Other than my entire body still feeling like a giant bruise, I’m pretty much good. Was there anything else in the car?”

“Nope.” Harley takes a step towards the elevator, gesturing with the nod of his head for Peter to follow him, both of them having apparently already forgotten the presence of the others in the room. “This was the last box from our trip. Happy got the rest of the stuff from your room upstairs, and Ned and MJ are at the apartment with May to get the last of it loaded into her car. Which—” they step into the elevator, and Harley balances the box between him and the railing to point at Peter with a very stern look on his face, “—you will _not_ be helping to carry, unless you want a very protective boyfriend, an angry Dr. Cho, _and_ a panicking Iron Man strapping you down to the couch until dinner. Don’t argue with me on this, Peter, or I swear to god I'll throw a full blown tantrum until you give up.”

Peter scoffs. “Harley, seriously, I’m _fine,_ I can carry a few boxes—”

“Last night, you puked all over my bed because you stood up too fast.”

The elevator doors close before Peter’s spluttered out response can be heard. Steve stares at the closed doors in blatant confusion for what feels like a long time, trying to make sense of what just happened.

“Let’s talk rules.”

“We’ve already been debriefed on rules,” Natasha says, brows pinched together as she looks at Tony, who’s standing—not sitting—at the head of the conference table, his features steeled over and cool, hard to read. Sam, sitting to Steve’s left, says nothing. Steve just blinks, uncertain on how to react.

Tony pushes his hands off the table and crosses his arms over his chest. “The rules of the accords, yes,” he nods, professional and serious and not at all the Tony Stark they remember. “However, you’re house arrest is in my home, and I have rules for living here. If you break them, you go right back to being fugitives, because I won’t let you stay here anymore. Which, surprisingly, the UN agreed with me about, so you better listen closely."

Steve frowns. “That doesn’t sound fair.”

“Neither is me being forced to house your asses, but here we are,” Tony quips, shrugging. Then, before anyone else can speak up, he jumps right into it. “Firstly, you are not permitted above floor ninety two unless someone with a higher clearance gives you access, and even then, the access will be temporary and permission will be needed again to go back up. Second—”

“Wait a second,” Steve says, leaning forward in his seat. “How will that work? I very clearly remember the fact that out rooms are on the ninety third floor.”

Tony glares at him until he leans back again. “They were, but now they aren’t. You’re on floor ninety.”

Feeling flabbergasted, Steve shakes his head and asks, “Why were we moved?”

“Floor ninety three now belongs to the Parker’s,” Tony answers simply. “Which brings me back to my second rule: don’t fuck with my family. I don’t care if they annoy you, if they say something you don’t like, whatever. If you so much as make anyone I love feel slightly uncomfortable, you’re out.”

“I thought the Avengers were your family,” Nat speaks up.

Tony’s glare shifts to her. “The people I call family is a small list, and you two aren’t on it.”

Something about that makes something ache in Steve’s chest, but— “Two? Why just us two?”

“Because Barton turned himself in,” Tony says. “He chose his family, and we talked it out. Once he stopped trying to blindly follow you, he read the accords, helped me figure out what parts needed to be changed, and in return, I worked my ass off to make his house arrest as short as possible. Him and his family visit once a month. Lang, even though I barely know the guy, did the same. Wanda and I have been talking through Vision since this mess started, and we’ve found middle ground, which is why she didn’t come in with you and is being flown in tomorrow instead, on a Quinjet that will take her right to the roof so that she won’t have to worry about press. And you, Mister Wilson—” he looks directly at Sam, and, surprisingly, he smiles, a real, _grateful_ smile. “When I found a way to contact you and begged you for weekly phone calls to help out Peter, you trusted me not to turn you in, and you helped him. Thank you for doing that, by the way. He’s a good kid, but he’s been through hell and he needs that help.”

Sam smiles back, and any residual tension leaves him in an instant. “I won’t lie,” he says, “I was kinda disappointed when he said he didn’t need those calls anymore. I miss talking to the little punk.”

“Well, you live in the same building now, and he’s excited to see you,” Tony tells him. “Just give him some time, though. We had a… pretty big scare, to say the least, a little over a week ago, and he’s still healing, so he might not be up to that quite yet. I’ll ask him about it when I go check on him, though.”

“I don’t understand,” Steve cuts in, thoroughly confused now. “What’s he talking about, Sam?”

And, oddly enough, Sam seems to get defensive at the question, lips tugged down into a little frown as he looks over at Steve. “Stark has an intern, Peter. Kid’s only sixteen, but he’s been through a lot of trauma and needed some kind of therapy or counseling, but he refused to talk to someone unless he knew they could keep it a secret. Because of my credentials and everything, Stark got in contact with me through T’Challa, and I had little counseling sessions over the phone with the kid every Wednesday for a few months."

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Nat asks. “He could have tracked us down and—”

“But I didn’t,” Tony cuts in coldly. “It wasn’t about me, and it wasn’t about you guys. It was about Peter. Now, if you don’t mind, I want to get this done and go back to my family as fast as possible.” When no one speaks up, he nods once, stuffs his hands into his front pockets, and continues. “Rule three, no fighting. Not only could this whole thing have been avoided if you assholes had just sat down and let us all talk through our opinions to find a middle ground, but I have a kid here, and another kid is currently moving in. Sure, they’re not _little_ kids—Pete’s turning seventeen next week and Harley turned seventeen in June, so they’re able to form their own opinions, blah, blah, blah, but I’m working my ass off to set a good example for those two, and that includes better communication and not letting things escalate. Is that understood?” Again, no one speaks, but there are three silent nods. Tony sighs. “Good. Like I said, your rooms are on floor ninety, as well as a laundry room and a kitchen. Ninety one has a gym, a small lab, and other things that you can explore and use to your heart's content. Which reminds me—rule four, no weapons are allowed to leave your gym until the UN trusts you to be smart and safe with them. If you try to take something with you, or if you try to go somewhere you haven’t been authorized, Friday will warn you once. If that doesn’t stop you, she will provide a lock down wherever you are to make it so you can’t leave, and she’ll contact me, Ross, and members of the board to alert them of breaking the house rules. Above all that is the rules of the accords, obviously, but those won’t really matter until you’ve been taken off house arrest and are back on the team. Got it?”

Again, three nods, though this time Steve speaks up to say, “Thank you, Tony. For all of this.”

But Tony just shakes his head. “I didn’t do it for you, Cap. The world needs the Avengers, and that’s what you guys are, even if I don’t trust you right now, even if I don’t want you here. Now, before I leave and let you guys get settled, do any of you have any questions you want me to answer? And keep it civil.”

Instantly, Natasha lifts a hand slightly in the air, though she doesn’t wait for a response before she’s asking, “Who are the kids? Are they yours? Why are they living in the tower? And who are the Parker’s?”

“Wow.” Tony lets out some kind of chuckle, one that’s not all that genuine, but isn’t fully flat, either. “I would have preferred one question at a time, but let’s tackle this. Uh, the kids—Peter and Harley. Peter, like Sam said, is my intern, so no, not mine. Pepper and I do have legal guardianship over Harley, though, because his family lives in Tennessee and his mom wanted him to get a better education. Or, he just ran off and she let him, I think. I’m not sure the whole reason for why, but I met the kid when he was twelve, and he showed up here back in March asking for a place to stay, so we got that set up. Technically, though, also not mine, even though I do feel very parental over both of them, but not in a weird way, ‘cause they’re dating now, but that’s—yeah. Not the point. They also have two friends, Michelle and Ned, who come over a lot, so you’ll probably see them around, too. As for who the Parker’s are, they're Peter and his Aunt May, who is a nurse that we hired under Helen’s training to join the medical staff, and since Helen and her medical staff have rooms here and at the compound, we offered to just have her and Peter move in.”

Sam leans forward, brows furrowed. “You said there was a scare last week. What happened?”

Tony clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and something about his demeanor darkens as he glances around the room. “Well, that involves things that I’m not willing to share, but let’s just say it was a close call and we weren’t sure if Pete was gonna pull through. Sam, when you see him, you can ask for specifics, but those specifics aren’t mine to talk about, especially with people he doesn’t know nor trust.”

“You’re keeping secrets, Stark?”

The pure anger that crosses Tony’s face when he turns to look at Steve is almost stifling. “First off,” he starts, voice low and practically murderous, “you are in _no fucking place_ to tell me about _secrets_, Rogers. And secondly, it’s not a secret—it’s personal information that isn’t mine to share. Have some fucking respect.”

Steve doesn’t look away, gaze unwavering, though his eyes reflect regret. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Sure you are,” Tony huffs, but he leaves it at that, scans over the three of them again before stepping back with a long, slow breath. “Rhodey will be here later today. Wanda gets here with Vision tomorrow. Barton and Lang are both planning to visit early next week, and T’Challa is flying Barnes out here next month. Your rooms are exactly the same as they were when you left, just a few floors down. Food, clothes, movies, whatever, feel free to order without asking, I don’t care. Are there any other questions?”

No one says anything.

“Good,” Tony murmurs, before spinning on his heel and walking away.

_Smug._

That’s the only word to describe the look on Harley’s face as Helen stands in front of Peter, who’s wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, and gives him a long, thorough lecture. “Your abilities are working for you,” she says, hands on her hips, brows raised. “But you have to give them the chance to do their job, Peter. If you strain yourself too much, your healing won’t work as fast or as efficiently, and there’s a chance it won’t be able to heal you to a hundred percent. And despite the fact that I’ve been telling you this all week, you still keep trying to do the heavy lifting, straining your body and putting yourself at risk, and for what? To bring up some plates? Someone else can get the plates, Peter.”

Fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, Peter turns his head down to the ground, sinks his teeth into his lower lip and lets out a long, slow sigh. “I know,” he murmurs, twisting the fabric around his fingers. “I just—I hate this so much, I—I feel fine one second, like I’m back to normal, but then the next second it’s like I’m about to pass out from random pain, and it just—it _sucks._ I feel useless right now, okay? And I hate being useless when I could be doing something to help. Doing nothing is driving me freakin’ crazy.”

“You don’t have to do nothing,” Helen tells him, tone a little bit more gentle. “But avoid the unnecessary stuff, okay? You carried up a lot of boxes and bags today, let the others do the rest while you relax.”

“I never relax,” Peter huffs, slouching his shoulders a bit. “And when can I take these stupid glasses off? I feel like a douche bag ‘cause I have to wear them indoors.”

Reaching forward, Helen plucks the glasses off the perch of Peter’s nose. “How well can you see?”

Peter squints, and his eyes clearly struggling to see his surroundings. Still, he tries, looks around the room, before sighing in reluctant defeat. “Better than yesterday,” he tries meekly, frowning. “But still not all that well. It’s like my eyes can’t focus on anything, like when I first got bit, but ten times worse.”

“And that’s why the glasses stay on,” Helen says, sliding them back up the bridge of Peter’s nose. “Automatically adjusting for you, plus helping block out light that would be overwhelming, as well as monitoring progress in healing. At this rate, no more than another week and you should be good.”

With a dramatic sigh, Peter flops over to lay on his side on the couch, wincing slightly at the ache it causes in his… well, in his _everything_, really. “The Vulture was more fun than this.”

Helen frowns. “He dropped a building on you.”

“And compared to me vomiting five times a day, not being able to see without these douchey glasses, and still feeling like I’m being violently torn apart from the inside out, that building was a god damn picnic.”

“Sometimes I forget how much of a dramatic asshole you can be,” Harley says, snickering as he steps forward, though there’s a little glimmer of a lot of things in his eyes, something a little fond, a lot worried, but he just smiles a cute little smile and nudges Peter’s arm lightly. “Sit up a sec, I’m gonna sit down and use my title as a worried boyfriend as an excuse to not have to carry more boxes.”

The glasses are too tinted to see, but it’s not hard to assume that Peter is directing a teasing for of half-assed glare Harley’s way as he lazily pushes himself into a sitting position, gives just enough space for Harley to sit down before he lets himself fall back into place, his head resting against Harley’s thighs, his knees curling up into his own chest until the blanket that he has draped over him. “Should’ve known you were just dating me for the convenient laziness,” he murmurs, suddenly much too tired for a joking tone.

Harley snorts anyway, lets his fingers run through Peter’s hair. “Oh, yeah, that’s definitely all it is,” he drawls sarcastically, rolling his eyes. “Totally not because you’re probably my soulmate or anything like that.”

Peter huffs, presses his forehead against Harley’s stomach, but he’s smiling slightly. “Obviously.”

“Go to sleep, you little shit,” Harley says, a fond little grin on his face as he looks down at Peter. “I’ll wake you up in time for dinner, assuming I don’t also pass the fuck out before then.”

“Hmph.” Peter adjusts the blanket so that it somewhat covers the rest of Harley’s lap, yet somehow doesn’t cover up Peter’s face. “I sleep, you sleep.”

Harley rolls his eyes again. “Okay, fine. May will probably wake us up, then.”

“Fine by me,” Peter mumbles, then promptly lets out the tiniest little snore humanly possible. By this point, Helen has already left the room, shaking her head with a small smile, though neither of them can exactly pinpoint her departure. Harley giggles lightly at the snore, but falls asleep shortly after.

Tony comes in, tense and upset and clearly in need of a movie night to relax, only to immediately soften into a happy little smile at the sight he sees.

May and Pepper are sitting in the hand me down sofa that Tony helped the Parker’s buy for their floor, to help fill the living room that’s about twice as big as their old one, both of them balancing a plate of pizza in their laps. MJ and Ned are sitting on the floor, each with their own pizza as well, and Happy is zonked out in one of the two recliners that Tony also convinced May to let him help pay for. On the smaller sofa, the one that came from the Parker’s apartment (that Tony is planning to convince May to let him replace with something newer and less dingy at some point), Peter and Harley are fast asleep, Harley sort of slouched over on his side, cheek pressed to Peter’s blanket covered hip, while Peter’s head rests in Harley’s lap, both of them letting out soft little snores, the sound frankly adorable in comparison to the occasional loud rumble of a snore that Happy releases every minute or so.

“You started the pizza party without me?” Tony asks, voice soft and joking and definitely happy to see most of the people he really cares about lounging around, relaxes and content and safe. “Rude.”

“We saved you some of your favorite, Mister Stark, sir!” Ned happily chirps, grinning from ear to ear, and it’s a nice change, seeing how he’s still excitable about being around Tony, being in the Stark Tower in the first place, but Peter and Harley have been bringing Ned and MJ over pretty much every day since coming back from Tennessee nearly a month ago, and they’ve both been glued to Peter’s side almost as much as Tony, May and Harley have been since the whole almost dying thing last week, so he’s definitely become a bit more adjusted to Tony's presence and has toned down his excitement by now.

Tony smiles warmly, swipes up his plate and settles himself at the end of the sofa that Pepper and May are sitting on, Pepper instantly leaning into him when he does so. “Thanks, kid,” he tells Ned, smiles a little wider at the way the kid beams in response, then turns his attention to the TV, which is playing some movie he doesn’t recognize at a lower volume, clearly to avoid waking the sleeping people in the room.

Next to Ned, MJ leans over, the ends of her lips tugging up into some kind of little smile, and she murmurs something quietly, something only Ned can hear, and whatever it is has to be funny, because Ned claps his hand over his mouth to stop from snorting to loudly. He murmurs something back, and when MJ leans away, she’s wearing one of her full sized grins that she only has around her friends.

“How was it?” Pepper asks, a bit quiet to keep from drawing everyone’s attention to them, but Tony doesn’t really mind the rest of them overhearing—these people, plus Rhodey and Helen, are the people he trusts wholeheartedly, without a doubt in his mind, without any hesitance in his soul.

So, at a normal volume (though still just a little quiet, because he doesn’t wanna wake up Happy, Harley, or Peter), he answers, “It was okay. Sam is on my good list, for sure. He seemed really worried when I mentioned Peter having a scare last week, so hopefully Pete will be up to seeing him soon. Romanov and Rogers are… confused, I think, and I don’t really know how I’m supposed to trust them, but it’s a work in progress, right?” He shrugs, lets out a sigh and scrubs a hand over his features tiredly. “Whatever. Rhodey should be here within the hour, Wanda and Vision get here tomorrow, Scott and Clint are both bringing their families to visit, too, but not until next week. I think, after Wanda gets here, I’ll set up an official dinner with everyone, just to get everybody acquainted with each other, you know?”

“I think that could be extremely beneficial to everyone,” Pepper nods. “Especially considering just how much has changed since they lived here before. A lot of things are so different now.”

May clears her throat a bit, drawing their attention, and says, “Would they… I mean, you told them to be nice, right? Because I—I mean, it’s not that I don’t trust you, I absolutely do, especially when it comes to Peter’s safety, but thinking back on how bruised up Peter was after Germany, I just… I get anxious.”

Tony nods a bit, giving her a warm, understanding smile. “I told them that if they make anyone even the slightest bit uncomfortable or step a toe out of line, they’re getting kicked out,” he informs her. “Trust me, when it comes to having them back here, my number one priority is you, Peter, Harley, and Pepper. One move that might even imply putting anyone in this room in danger, and their asses are out of here.”

The look on May’s face is one of adoring gratitude as she glances between Tony and Pepper, shaking her head slightly in some kind of awe-filled shock. “This is still so bizarre,” she murmurs, shaking her head slightly. “I just… I can’t believe how incredible you’ve been to Peter and I. Seriously, thank you.”

“Please, don’t thank us,” Pepper is quick to say. Tony nods, about to reply, when—

“What the _fuck?”_

Looking over, it becomes clear that, while the three of them were talking, Ned and MJ made themselves busy finding random objects and items to balance on Harley and Peter’s sleeping forms. Harley is the one that’s awake now, blinking heavily at the remote that’s somehow balanced on the bridge of his nose, though it falls onto his chest when he lifts his head to squint around the room, parts his lips, most likely to ask another question or something, only to freeze when he sees the remaining pizza sitting in the open boxes on the coffee table. Instantly, he reaches over, shakes Peter’s shoulder lightly until he lets out a sleepy hum that goes up at the end, some kind of unspoken question.

Harley brushes away a pen tucked behind Peter’s ear and says, “Babe, there’s pizza.”

A short pause, and then Peter looks over his shoulder, the special sunglasses on his face askew, hair an absolute sleep-caused mess, and he rasps out, “P’zza? Where—?”

“Here,” MJ says, holding up the plate with the slices of pizza they set aside for Peter. Ned does the same with Harley’s plate. “Sit up first, you morons. You’ll choke if you try to eat it like that.”

“Y’er the best,” Peter sleepily slurs, trying to push himself up into a sitting position, which Harley quickly helps him with when he visibly winces. Once they’re both sitting properly (though they’re still leaning heavily against each other, shoulders pressed together), they accept their plates and instantly start to practically inhale their pizza, eyes half lidded and stifling yawns.

Tony shakes his head and smiles, scans over the room—Happy is still passed out, Ned is now trying to ramble on to Harley and Peter, who are both clearly still half asleep and don’t seem to be processing anything he’s saying, MJ has a notebook opened in front of her, pen dancing across the page as she doodles in it, and both May and Pepper have already turned their attention back to the TV to watch whatever the hell is on there. Soon, Rhodey will be here, and Helen is probably either in her room, in the med bay, or on her way to the compound, and that—_this_—this is his family. This is his _everything._

And he’ll be damned if he lets a few Rogues fuck with any of them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did it!! i changed the series name and the description for it!!! this feels much more fitting!!
> 
> also i honestly don't know what the length of this fic will be? usually my chapters are longer and some of the other chaps will probably end up more or less lengthy depending on the situations and scenes and shit but as of now i think this one will be shorter than finding a reason but it might be about the same too so who knows we'll fuckin see ig

  1. **the dinner**

It starts like this:

You had a family, and it was a really good one, too. There was a handful of you, and you fought together, took down Hydra bases and had movie nights, laughed and smiled and trusted one another. You had something good, something really good, something that made being so far from home feel okay—that made being decades away from the time you grew up in feel doable. Here, you were happy.

Steve had been really, _really_ happy, back when things were okay. The Avengers made him feel at home in a way that he didn’t think would be possible after coming out of the ice. With them, he had a purpose, a simple goal that they all shared—save lives, stop danger, and avenge the ones they’ve lost. Sure, it wasn’t perfect—nothing ever really is—but it was comfortable. He had a team in the other five Avengers, and then he met Sam, and he bonded with Maria Hill and Nick Fury and Helen Cho and Pepper Potts, and suddenly dinner parties were bustling with a bunch of people that Steve genuinely enjoyed being around.

Then Ultron happened, and things got a little bit strained, and Bruce disappeared, Thor left, but they took in Wanda, started to train her to be one of them. Tony moved out to the Tower to be with Pepper and semi retire, and Steve and Natasha were able to put their focus in training and Avengers work and nothing else.

And it was good, until it wasn’t all that good anymore.

The blame, Steve thinks, can’t be placed on a single persons shoulders. Mistakes were made all around the board, each of them fucking up in their own ways, doing something wrong at multiple points along the way. Steve isn’t naïve enough to consider himself innocent, but he isn’t dumb enough to blame himself, either. It was all of them, he knows, and it’s only all of them that can fix it.

Which is why he’s genuinely excited when Friday gives them the alert for the dinner, informing them that they’ve been granted access to the pent house for the evening to eat dinner with everyone else. It feels like a step, like an outstretched hand from Tony, an invitation to put down the foundation for the bridge they’re going to rebuild, stronger and damn near indestructible.

In his excitement, he makes sure everyone is ready for dinner thirty minutes earlier than necessary, and the moment that Friday tells them they’ve been given access, he ushers everyone into the elevator and grins to himself and thinks that this is it. This is where things get better. This is something good.

“Oh, god dammit,” Harley says the moment they step into the kitchen, sitting on top of the island counter with Peter standing between his legs and leaning against him, looking close to falling asleep despite the fact that he’s standing up. Pepper is stirring a large pot of spaghetti sauce, the noodles already cooked and waiting on the counter, two stacks of bowls at the ready. “Is this really happening? Like, actually?”

“Be nice,” is all Pepper says, not looking up from where she’s stirring. Then, assumedly to the people who just entered the room, she says, “Everything’s ready. Peter and Harley get to make their bowls first, because they’re the youngest and that’s just the rule of the house, but after that, feel free to grab some and take a seat in the living room. Tony is finishing something in the lab—”

Peter, with a purposefully bad fake cough that ruins the illusion of his grogginess, exclaims, “Stalling!”

Clearly used to this type of interruption, Pepper goes on like nothing was said. “Rhodey is with him to make sure he actually comes to dinner, Happy is on his way up, and Vision and Wanda are with May down on the Parker’s floor but should be up any minute.”

“What’re they doing there?” Sam asks, not in the way that Steve wants to ask—he sounds genuinely curious, but Steve feels a little wary by that, because Wanda is still young and impressionable and he doesn’t really know this May, has only heard of her through Tony. But Steve is still enthusiastic and hopeful about this dinner, and he needs to build his trust in Tony again, so he needs to not worry over someone that Tony clearly considers to be his family now.

“Tony said somethin’ about Wanda wanting to take up some new hobbies,” Peter answers, and Steve feels a little concerned at the blatant PDA of the teenage couple, one of Harley’s hands twisting strands of Peter’s hair between his fingers, Peter letting out a little sigh before pressing a kiss to Harley’s cheek and stepping back, both of his hands settling on Harley’s hips to aid him in sliding off the countertop and staying steady on his feet. “May took up crocheting after Ben died, so she thought it’d be nice to try and teach Wanda. Vision just went because he had nothing else to do, I think.”

With a wide sort of smile, Sam makes his way over, clearly not concerned by the PDA like Steve is, and ruffles Peter’s hair a bit, glancing between him and Harley with something amused and fond in his eyes. “You’ve gotten better at bringing him up,” Sam says, rather knowingly. “You find someone else to help you with that, little bug? Or am I just that good of a therapist?”

Peter swats Sam’s hand away, but he has a smile, and if those odd glasses weren’t still perched on his nose, there’s no doubt that there would be laugh lines crinkled up at the corner of his eyes. “Who’s to say I didn’t just get better by myself, bird man? Maybe you had nothing to do with it.”

“Let me guess,” Sam says with a snicker, though his withdraws his hand and holds both arms up in some kind of joking surrender. “Your little boyfriend here is a better therapist than I was?”

There’s a little giggle from Harley at that, but Peter just crinkles his nose. “Treating him like a therapist is a sure fire way to send our relationship spiraling into unhealthy territory,” he states firmly.

Sam barks out a laugh. “I’m the one that told you that!”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Pepper interrupts, rolling her eyes as she steps between them, the ends of her lips twitching up into some kind of amused grin. “Boys, get your dinner and go sit down. Peter first.”

“Yeah, we know the drill, Pep,” Harley says, and Steve watches in mild bewilderment as Harley slides his hand across Peter’s shoulders and down to the small of his back, keeping it there as the two of them round the island and approach the bowls to get their pasta. “Am I right to assume there’s already some more set aside for the bottomless pit that is Peter’s stomach?”

Pepper chuckles and nods towards the microwave. “It’s in there, but—“ she looks at Peter, “—you can get your first serving from what’s set out right now, and then take what’s in the microwave after, okay?”

Peter grins. “Thanks, Miss Potts.”

Waving a dismissive hand through the air, Pepper tells him, “No need for thanks. And call me Pepper, you should know this by now.”

“Thanks, Pepper,” Peter corrects, grin growing.

“C’mon, I’m hungry and you have to go first,” Harley says, nudging his elbow lightly against Peter’s ribcage. Quickly, Peter nods and happily trots his way over to the stove with an empty bowl in hand, quickly piling some noodles into the bowl before adding in some sauce, and then he only shuffles over a little bit, leaves almost no room for Harley to repeat his actions with his own dinner, their sides pressed to one another from hip to shoulder. Harley leans over a bit, whispers something to Peter that makes him snort, and when he’s leaning back, he sees Steve’s eyes on them, a frown on his face. Quirking a brow, Harley turns around, grabs Peter’s hand to intertwine their fingers, and asks, “Is there a reason you’re looking at us like we just kicked a bunch of puppies, Captain Shit Brick?”

Pepper sucks in a sharp breath and hisses out, “Be _nice,”_ before looking over to find that Steve is, in fact, _still_ looking at the two teens with a sour expression on his features. She cocks her head to the side, crosses her arms over her chest and takes a not so subtle steps over, somewhat placing herself between Steve and the couple. “Actually, I take that back. Answer his question, Mr. Rogers.”

A bit taken aback by the sheer coldness in her tone, Steve shuffles back a bit and holds his hands out in front of him to hopefully convey that his intentions are harmful. “I’m sorry,” he starts. “I just—aren’t they a little young to be all… all touchy feely like that? It just seems inappropriate to me.”

“Are you—” Harley cuts himself off with a spluttering sort of laugh, looks over at Peter to share a look of amusement, and then goes still at the furrow of his brow and the thin pressed line of his lips, and from where he’s standing, he can kind of see the way that Peter’s eyes are narrowed into a glare. Suppressing a smug sort of half smile, Harley squeezes Peter’s hand once and asks, “Honey, you okay?”

“Yeah,” Peter responds instantly, and it sounds genuine, but then he’s turning a bit and gently setting his bowl of pasta on the counter top, at the same time as he lets go of Harley’s hand, wipes his palms against his sweatpants, and promptly marches up to Steve, who must be a good five or six inches taller than him, and he shoves him square in the chest with enough force to send Steve stumbling back a few steps, looking shocked at the amount of strength Peter has. Peter doesn’t give Steve time to question that, though, instead pointes a finger at him and glares so hard that it can be felt through the dark lens glasses still perched on his nose, and he says, “You have _no right_ to assert what you think is or isn’t appropriate, Captain Righteous. I almost died less than two weeks ago, okay? And everything still kind of hurts even though I try to pretend it doesn’t, and yeah, I’m about to turn seventeen and he just did in June, so we’re young, but in the five months I’ve known him, we’ve been through a fucking lot together, alright? Most adults aren’t _nearly_ as mature in their relationships, and we both know that this might not be a forever thing, but we’re happy now and that’s what matters, so we’re gonna be as touchy feely as we fucking want and you’re not gonna say _shit_ about it because after everything you’ve done, you don’t get to be judgmental. You lost your fucking right to do that. So just—just _shut up _and fucking _deal with it,_ okay?!”

Steve scowls, rubbing a hand over his chest, where Peter had pushed him. “How are you so strong, kid?”

Peter’s hands clench into fists. “Don’t call me kid, Rogers, or you’ll see how fucking strong I am.”

“Woah, woah, woah—what the hell is going on here?!”

In the blink of an eye, Tony is standing between them, and Harley is suddenly behind Peter with a hand on his waist, and it’s kind of satisfying to see the way Steve balks under Tony’s heated glare, but Peter is shaking in his anger and it’s clear in his wavering voice as he grits out, “Captain Asshat decided to make a comment about me and Harley being too touchy feely for his liking.”

Tony’s nose scrunches up with a deep grimace, and he looks about two seconds away from snapping when Rhodey puts a hand on his shoulder, apparently having been right behind Tony on the way up from the lab, and interferes with a calm little, “How about we wait until May gets up here to discuss this.”

“To discuss what?” May questions, stepping into the kitchen from the direction of the elevators. Wanda and Vision are a few steps behind her, both looking equally confused about the situation at hand. As soon as May’s eyes land on Peter, however—as soon as she sees the way he’s clenching his fists and shaking and looking at Steve with a murderous snarl—she steps forward, until she’s shoulder to shoulder with Tony, and she asks, “What the hell happened? What did they do?”

“Star Spangled Dickhead decided to say something about Peter and Harley being—I’m sorry, what were his exact words, Pete?”

Harley tightens his hold on Peter’s waist and answers for him. “He said that we’re too young to be so touchy feely and that he thinks it’s inappropriate. Then he called Peter kid, which is only something he lets adults that he trusts do, so that pissed him off even more, and now I’m probably gonna have to go with Pete to one of the training rooms to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself while blowing off steam.”

“He’s strong,” Steve cuts in, tone almost accusatory. “He was able to push me. How is he that strong?”

“I’m sorry,” May sneers, and she may be shorter than him, may not have intimidation in her height or her posture, but there’s a fury in her eyes that would make the most fearless man tremble. “You don’t get to ask questions right now. What makes you think you have the right to say something like that?”

Steve frowns, shaking his head. “Ma’am, I meant no offense, I was just simply pointing out that, in my day, being so handsy at such a young age while in a place where people can see simply wasn’t okay.”

The laugh that Tony lets out is mostly humorless. “You were raised in the fucking thirties, Rogers! It’s different now, and even if it wasn’t, this is _their_ home, where they have the comfort and the freedom to be as cuddly and touchy feely as they fucking want because this is where they’re supposed to feel safe. I told you already, if you so much as make any of my family feel uncomfortable, then I’m kicking your ass to the curb, so what the fuck make you think being an asshole like that would be okay?”

“Peter, honey, I think you need to go sit down,” Pepper speaks up then, sounding concerned. Peter doesn’t respond, is too busy flinching at every scuffle of a shoe, every heavy breath, every gust of air that brushes against his skin. Harley goes to rub his thumb in a soothing circle on his hip, but the touch makes him wince and step away, because his anger, still hot and venomous in his veins, mixed with the overall sensitivity caused by him slowly healing has worked together to trigger a mild sensory overload.

Apparently already realizing this, Harley softly says, “C’mon, sweetheart, let’s go down to your room for a bit, okay? The headphone prototypes are in your desk drawer, and we can just come back up to eat later, when they’re gone.” _And when you’re not feeling so overwhelmed._ Harley doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t have to, because the people in the room who actually know Peter—mostly just May, Tony, Harley, Pepper, Rhodey, and Sam—can detect the double meaning in his words just fine.

Tony nods, pitches his voice to be quiet as he says, “That’s a good idea. Just let Friday know if you want someone to bring you dinner instead, okay? And don’t forget, Helen will be here later tonight, and she’s gonna do another check up on your progress while she’s here, but she can come to you to do it.”

After a moment, Peter curtly nods, and he follows Harley out of the room and towards the elevator, carefully weaving between people and objects to make sure he doesn’t touch anything along the way. Everyone stares after them, some concerned, some confused, some a mixture of the two. Steve parts his lips to say something, but is cut off by a hard glare from both May and Pepper, their harsh looks keeping him silent until the elevator doors slide shut. Only when the two teens are gone do their glares loosen up a bit, but not by much. Steve shakes his head, utterly lost, and asks, “You’re letting them go to a room unsupervised? Tony, they’re _teenagers._ Don’t you think—?”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Tony interrupts, his brows pinched together as he scans over the room. The rest of the rogues, who have remained silent this entire time, all shift on their feet and look away, not wanting to step into this fight. “Alright, does anyone else agree with Steve?” A long pause follows, no one speaking up or raising their hand or voicing their agreement. Tony nods, satisfied. “Good. Then you guys can go ahead and get your dinner. But you—” he turns his eyes back to Steve, who looks a soft breeze away from lashing out in his blatant frustration at the situation. “You just pissed off the wrong people, Rogers. Sit your ass down while I get Angie on the line.”

Steve’s frown deepens. “Who’s Angie?”

“One of the four parents that are about to tell you off,” Pepper answers bluntly.

“Parents?” Steve repeats. “But you and Tony aren’t their parents. And I thought you said May was Peter’s Aunt, not his mother, so I don’t understand…that’s it, I guess. I just don’t understand.”

May lets out a sigh, shaking her head in some kind of exasperation. “His parents are dead,” she tells Steve, straight forward and to the point. “Me and my husband Ben took him in. He was only four at the time, so we essentially raised him together, until Ben died, about three years ago. So yes, I am Peter’s aunt, but on all accounts other than biological, I’m his mom. And as his mom, I can assure you that Pepper and Tony are like parents to him, in a similar way that they’re parents to Harley, too. Not to mention the fact that Pepper and Tony are legally his guardians, too, and that we, including Angie, keep in contact on an almost hourly basis to make sure we’re all on agreement on how Peter and Harley are being treated and raised. Is that enough to understand, or do you need more of an explanation?”

Unable to help it, Tony snickers, while Pepper gives May a wide, amused smile. “Enough chit chat,” Tony says, though he’s still chuckling as he speaks. Around them, everyone shuffles about, getting their bowls and filling them with a serving of pasta. Rhodey, Nat and Sam are already in the living room, their chattering faintly audible from the kitchen, Wanda is working on getting her bowl, and Happy, who just walked in during the midst of May’s little ramble, is waiting to get his own dinner while sporting a small smirk. Vision is waiting by the door for Wanda, seemingly just watching the exchange as he does so. “Friday, can you call up Angie Keener? And put her on speaker, just this room, please.”

“Of course, Boss,” Friday responds. “Calling Miss Keener now.”

In the living room, the movie playing on the TV turns off suddenly, replaced with a video and audio security feed from the kitchen. Confused, Rhodey asks, “Friday, what is this?”

Friday’s voice almost sounds smug when she answers, “Optimal entertainment for everyone to enjoy while eating dinner, Colonel Rhodes.”

“Oh.” Rhodey settles back in his seat, spinning noodles around his fork with a grin. “Thanks, Fri.”

“Look, I’m not trying to judge your parenting, I just think it’s inappropriate—”

“Inappropriate how, exactly?”

Steve stumbles over his words, the crease between his brows deep and angry. “Inappropriate in the sense that they’re teenagers acting like a married couple without any regard to who’s around them. Not only that, but they’re currently on a completely different floor, unsupervised in one of their bedrooms! I’m not a parent, but I don’t understand how you could allow that when they’re—when they could be—”

“Having sex?” Angie interrupts, the condescending tone in her voice crisp and clear even through the line. Steve physically flinches at that, clearly wanting to have a less blunt approach, but he doesn’t get the chance to confirm or deny her question before she’s going on to say, “Captain Rogers, I don’t mean to offend you, but you’re dumb as hell if you think we’re not worried about that. Of course we are, we’re parents, and unless one or both of them ends up being asexual, then it’s bound to happen eventually. Are Harley and Peter having sex? We honestly don’t know, because neither of them have approached any of us about it, but trying to stop them from ever doing it will only lead to them sneaking around and potentially putting themselves in danger or using unsafe methods to do it anyway. My son knows that, when he’s ready, I’ll help provide him with anything he needs. He’s had access to proper protection since he hit puberty, just to be safe, and I’ve spoken to May about it and she said she’s been the same way. Our boys are smart, Rogers, and if they’re ready, then they’re ready, and we’re not going to stop that because we trust them to make that choice and to be safe and to approach us if they ever need to talk about it.”

Tony bobs his head in a nod and adds, “I also might have given both of them little talks a couple days after they got back from Tennessee. Separately, obviously, and they both looked like they would rather die than listen to me, but I made sure they know that Friday has their privacy as a priority and the bathrooms are all stocked with protection for anyone who needs it, including them.”

“Point is,” May says, “the four of us have that covered, and you’re not in any place to judge our choices.”

“I’m not—” Steve stops, sighs, scrubs a hand over his features with a bubble of frustration in his throat. “Judging is not my goal here, I can promise you that. I just don’t understand… I can’t get over how young they are, and their behavior with one another is like a couple who has been together for years. Isn’t that unhealthy? That kind of… codependency, I guess would be the right word. Isn’t that bad?”

Letting out a long, slow breath, Pepper takes a few steps closer to him, settles a hand on his shoulder in what would be a friendly gesture if her nails weren’t digging a little too much into his skin, and she tells him, “These two aren’t like other teens, Steve. We won’t tell you how or why, because that involves a lot of personal information that’s frankly none of your business, but you have to understand that Harley and Peter aren’t just two teenagers who like each other. They handle their relationship better than a majority of adults do, they have a completely open and honest form of communication that’s hard to fine in a majority of platonic relationships, let alone romantic ones. They know how to prioritize one another without forgetting their other priorities, they know how to work together and how to work alone, they’ve never shown any sort of jealousy or mistrust towards one another, and they even have a deal to wait until they’re eighteen to say they love each other because they know how risky it is to rush into that. I guess, on some level, I can understand where your concern is coming from, even if there’s no reason for you to think you have the right to actually confront us about it, but their well-being, their health and their safety, is something we think about constantly. If there was any true risk of them being unhealthy for one another, we would interfere in a heartbeat.”

“Plus, Peter really did have a huge scare,” Tony says. “We almost lost him, and Harley was right there to see the whole thing. He refused to leave Pete’s side for more than five minutes, even when the poor kid was screaming and puking everywhere. I think they deserve to be a little bit touchy after that.”

“I… I guess that makes sense,” Steve murmurs, but something still feels not right about it. “I just…”

May shakes her head, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “No, we’re done here. If you can’t get it in your head that we know what’s best for our kids than you do, then there’s no point in trying to explain it even more. But let me make one thing clear, Captain America.” She takes a small step forward, the action borderline threatening all on it’s own. “If you so much as step a single toe out of line when it comes to those kids, then it won’t matter if you have super soldier serum or whatever the fuck runs through your veins, because I’ll kick your ass to the ends of the galaxy and back, and I won’t show an ounce of mercy. When it comes to them, you’re nothing but polite and kind and understanding, okay?”

_Not okay,_ Steve thinks, because that feeling of wrong is still churning min his gut and he feels like he has more to say even though no words come to mind, but he has no ground here. May has the fire of a thousand suns burning in her eyes, Pepper looks close to beating his ass already, Tony is somewhere between amused and thoroughly pissed off, and he can tell that Angie is probably silently debating whether or not she should fly to New York just to take a swing at him. So, with no other option, he simply nods, the action unsure and reluctant, and says, “Okay.”

“Dinner and a show,” Happy jokes, nestled into the corner of the sofa with his now empty pasta bowl in his lap. “I’m surprised May hasn’t already punched him. She’s slapped Tony for less of a reason.”

Nat chuckles, brows raising. “I’d pay to see that.”

“Oh, I saw it,” Rhodey says, laughing lightly. “It was great. Tony looks more shocked than anything else, and Pepper started laughing so hard that she had to leave the room. Poor Peter was just sitting in the corner and trying to act like nothing was happening, even as May chewed Tony out.”

That makes Wanda giggle lightly while Sam shakes his head in some kind of fond amusement—being the only one of the rogues that actually knows Peter makes him feel a lot more distant from the rest of them, because there are things he knows, things he understands, that the others simply don’t. Natasha lets her chuckle fade away before she attempts to keep her tone neutral and ask, “How did he get hurt, by the way? Everything I’ve heard made it sound like something really bad happened, but it hasn’t been two weeks and he’s walking around and seems fine to me, so I’m kind of curious about what happened.”

A silence settles over the room, and instantly, she knows she crossed a line. She had been hopeful, though—throughout their dinner, all of them, rogue Avengers and non, have been making jokes and laughing and enjoying one another’s company, in a way that felt eerily similar to before everything went wrong. She had hoped that the relaxed nature of the evening would be enough to make a tiny bit of curious prodding okay, but judging by the way Happy and Rhodey are both glaring dagger at her, even Sam glancing her way with a little frown, she had been mistaken.

“Sorry,’ she says, before anyone can tell her off. “I really am just curious. Not trying to dig into anyone’s business, especially not the business of a sixteen year old kid. Forget that I asked.”

Wanda lets out a little sigh from where she’s sitting, murmurs something under her breath that no one else is able to pick up, but Nat is willing to bet it was along the same lines as what she’s thinking—that they won’t forget she asked, they won’t let it go, and they won’t go back to normal, whatever normal may have been, just because of a single decent night joking around during dinner.

Even as she thinks that, she can’t help but glance at the TV, where the live security feed is still broadcasting the look of disdain on Steve’s face while he listens to whatever it is that Tony is saying, and be grateful that at least she’s not being forced to endure a lecture about the basic privacy of two teens.

(And maybe, she’ll admit, it’s pretty funny, hearing him try to stammer through a half assed excuse.)

(At least that’s something everyone in the living room can agree on.)

_(Poor, stupid bastard.)_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do i like how this fic is turning out?
> 
> not really, no, but it's a necessary step and i know logically that it's probably not as bad as my dumb perfectionist writer brain insists that it is. so. i'm posting it anyway. and after this will be one shots and the christmas fic and stuff that i'll have a bit more fun writing.

** 2\. the matching bracelets**

Miles, surprisingly enough, does not pass out in excitement when he walks into The Tony Stark AKA Iron Man’s personal lab. He forgets how to breathe for a minute, sure, and only sucks in a greedy breath when Peter nudges an elbow into his ribs, but he manages to stay upright despite his shaky knees and keeps his balking to a minimum, letting out a simple, “Wow,” before swallowing back all the energetic rambling that wants to tumble it’s way past his tongue.

“You can freak out,” Peter tells him. “I did, too.”

For a moment, Miles considers allowing his freak out to spill, but decides against it. “I’m good.”

Peter grins, pushes his tinted glasses up the slope of his nose, and shakes his head a bit, clearly amused and a little bit fond, too. Before he can say anything, though, a voice calls out—a very familiar voice, one that Miles is getting used to hearing because this is probably the fourth or fifth time that he’s actually been around Tony Stark and heard him speak—and says, “Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum, and your nonbiological child, get your asses over here. I have something to show you.”

Miles looks at Peter, eyes wide. “Am I the nonbiological child?”

“Obviously,” Harley says, practically appearing by Peter’s side with a crooked grin and a little pep in his step. He grabs Peter’s hand and tosses his other arm around Miles’s shoulder to lead them both across the lab, over to the table that Tony is standing by, arms crossed over his chest as he looks down at what appears to be various different little black boxes. “And I’m probably Tweedle-Dum, even though I kind of hate that because those two were, like, related, and now I’m very much uncomfortable, so—”

“Subject change,” Tony cuts in, rolling his eyes. “I have presents. For everybody, which means the rest of the team and everyone are on their way to the lab, but I’m showing you three first. You better be listening closely, ‘cause I’ve downed gallons worth of caffeine the past twenty four hours and I don’t think I could slow down if I wanted to, so pay attention. You ready?” Before any of them can do much more than nod, Tony says, “Good,” and picks up one of the black boxes, holding it up and twisting it around so they can see as he lifts the lid, revealing what’s placed inside. “It reads vitals,” Tony explains, holding the box out even further for them to take a closer look. “Not to be stalker-ish, but in case of emergencies, you know? Which is also why there’s a panic button on them, too—you three, and Ned and MJ, all of you will get one with two panic buttons, and the rest of us only have one, but how many times you press it changes who it alerts. And if you don’t like this design, I can change it, personalize it for you. You following?”

Three more nods, followed by Peter asking, “Why do we have two?”

Tony claps his hands together. “Ding, ding, ding! That’s the winning question, isn’t it? So, here’s how it’ll work, okay—there’s two because some things might require a panic button, but might not require the Avengers, right? So, if you look here—Pete, this one’s yours, by the way—“ he plucks the plain black looking bracelet of sorts out of the box, the texture appearing leather-like, though it’s actually a more snug, comfortably soft sort of fabric twined with Vibranium, and twists it around to show a little section of just metal, assumedly where the bracelet will settle against the inner wrist, “—this keeps the buttons safe, to, like, prevent accidentally pressing them, y’know? So, thanks to Fri having everyone’s fingerprints on file, if you—Peter, you, give me your hand—if you press any finger to it, it’ll—”

Peter’s eyes go wide as the pad of his finger presses against the cool metal, which instantly melts into the rest of the bracelet, revealing two buttons underneath, one red and one blue. “Nano tech?”

“Very, very small versions of the suit we’ve been working on,” Tony confirms, nodding. “And I took the liberty of making your buttons Spidey colored, but again, I can customize these however you guys want, so that can change if you want it to, but as it is, the blue button is the—the local button, I guess? It communicates only with the other nerds, and—and I did it so that, if you just press it once, it only alerts Harley, but if you press it twice, it’ll—” he presses the blue button twice, and four of the other boxes start to vibrate on the table. Picking up the closest box, he plucks out the bracelet tucked within, which looks exactly like Peter’s, and hands it to Harley, who gingerly accepts it with a slightly dropped jaw. “Put that on,” Tony instructs, then turns back to Peter. “So, if that wasn’t obvious, pushing it twice will alert all the nerds, so that way, if something happens at school that requires all five of you—yes, that includes you, Miles, since you got sucked into this weird fucking family—one of you will be able to alert all of you, but if you’re having, like, a panic attack, or an overload, and only want Harley, or vice versa, if something happens to Harley and he only wants you, then just press the blue button once. So then you don’t have to worry about trying to use phones in class or anything. And Miles, if you only press yours once, it’ll alert just Harley and Peter, and if you press it twice, then it’ll also Ned and MJ. Got it?”

“That’s so cool,” Miles breathes. “That’s so _cool.”_

Harley raises a hand, the bracelet secure around his wrist. “Uh—what now?”

Glancing over, Tony reaches forward to twist the bracelet a bit, until—as assumed—the metal piece is positioned against his inner wrist. “Okay,” he murmurs, leaning back and nodding once in satisfaction. “Okay, so, you know Morse code, right? All of you do?” He waits until he gets three nods, Peter and Harley sure, Miles a little timid, and then tells them, “Make sure you never forget it, because when someone presses a button to alert you—” he presses the blue button on Peter’s bracelet once, and instantly, the bracelet on Harley’s wrist begins to vibrate, “—it’ll spell out their name in Morse code. There aren’t a whole lot of doubles, too, so once you figure out the first letter is P, you can figure out that it’s Peter without having to feel the whole thing. For the double letters, like Miles and MJ, you can figure it out with the second letter, and then, it—if you have your phone, it’ll give you coordinates to where the person is, but if you don’t have your phone for whatever reason, then just—turn your wrist over, and look at—at the metal piece, over the buttons, and it’ll have an arrow pointing which way Pete’s bracelet is. It’s, kind of, like, LED lights built into with the nano tech, so it—look—”

“You need a nap, dude,” Harley murmurs, brows quirking up at Tony’s rambling, but does as told, turning his arm over to show the metal protector, exposing, as said, a small arrow lit up with small LED lights, pointing directly at Peter’s bracelet, still in Tony’s hand. He twists it bit, moves over, and watches as the arrow moves, too, still trained in on the one device. Harley shakes his head, eyes going a bit wide as he looks up at Tony to ask, “Where did this come from? You never mentioned making these before.”

Before Tony can answer, Friday speaks up, saying, “Boss, Mister Rogers, Mister Wilson, Miss Romanov, Mis—”

Tony waves a hand. “Yeah, I know. Let them in. Are May and Pepper with them?”

“Miss Parker and Miss Potts are on their way up the private elevator, separate from the others. Mister Hogan and Colonel Rhodes are with them.”

“Good,” Tony says, nodding to himself. “Good, good, good. Okay; then, your question—I’ve been thinking about doing something like this for a while, but I never got around to it, until mister I almost died for the hundredth time this year—” he jabs a thumb towards Peter, who only appears mildly offended by the accurate statement, “—went and almost died _again,_ and then, with Captain Fuckhead and his whole squad moving back in here, I just—I started sketching up the designs on a paper towel yesterday and I came down here and got them all done. I could’ve gone to bed, probably around one or two, honestly, but then I kept thinking of more ways to make them better, and now they—they’re perfect, and they’re gonna help keep you guys safe, and help the team, too.”

Across the lab, the doors slide open, and the herd steps in, all of the Rogues looking around curiously as they make their way into the lab. To their left, the private elevator that leads straight into the lab opens, Rhodey, Happy, May and Pepper stepping out, not even sparing the others a glance before they make their way over. Tony can’t help but grimace a bit, not liking having so many people in a space he considers safe and secure, but Peter speaks up before he can linger on the discomfort too long, asking, “What about the red button?”

Tony glances towards the others, but ultimately pretends they aren’t there, turning back to the kids to explain, “Well, if the blue is the local button, like I said, then red is the bigger button, right? But, same as the blue one, the amount of times you press it matters. If you press it once, it just alerts me, and if you press it twice, it alerts me, May, Pepper, Happy, and Rhodey. If you press it three times, it alerts the entire team. That’s the big guns, alright? Only press it three times if there are aliens falling from the sky or some shit. I trust you guys to know the difference between a problem and an Avengers sized problem. And I also trust you to fill in the other nerds, since they both have red buttons, too.”

“Do, um—” Miles stops, his eyes even wider than before as he glances over his shoulder, looks at where the Rogues are watching them all curiously. Pepper settles a protective hand on his shoulder and steps over, blocking Miles from their eyes, but Miles still ducks his head a bit and keeps his voice low as he asks, “Do I get a red button? ‘Cause I don’t—I dunno why I’d need it.”

“Take a look for yourself, kiddo,” Tony says, tossing Peter his bracelet before plucking one of the boxes off the table and handing it to Miles, who cradles it in his hands like it’s precious cargo, jaw dropped in awe. Tony chuckles, shaking his head fondly, and nods towards the station set up against the far wall, where Peter and Harley usually tend to work on projects together. “Go sit down and test them out, alright? I made sure they worked already, but it never hurts to try again, and maybe brush up on your Morse code, just to make sure you still got it down, and after that, you two—” he points at Harley and Peter, who are huddled close together and examining their bracelets with interest, their soft murmuring cutting off suddenly when they look up at him, “—can finally give pipsqueak the grand tour of the place. And I mean the whole place, not just the lab, so he actually knows where to go for things. And next time Ned and MJ come over, bring them in here so they can get their bracelets, too. Sound good?”

Miles looks over at Harley and Peter, awestruck. “I’m pipsqueak.”

“Yeah, you sure are, bud,” Harley says, snickering under his breath. “C’mon, let’s get the lame Morse code quizzing over with so we can show you all the fun places to hide. Oh, and the secret rooms.”

“Secret rooms?” Miles repeats, practically vibrating with excitement. “Did you just say _secret rooms?!”_

Peter pulls a face. “Yeah. There’s, like, thirty of them.”

Harley clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Thirty four,” he corrects. Miles gasps.

“Go,” Tony sighs, shooing the three of them away, even as a smile plays on his lips. Once they’ve scurried off (Miles letting out a yelp as they do, followed by a loud exclamation about his bracelet having a red button, too), he turns to Pepper and May, shaking his head. “Hooligans, am I right?”

“And their adopted hooligan child,” May agrees, nodding solemnly.

Pepper chuckles. “They’re adorable.”

“They’re a pain in the ass,” Tony corrects, snorting. Then, because he knows he can’t ignore them all day, he turns to the Rogues, brows raised. “Speaking of pains in the ass…”

Happy lets out a sudden bark of laughter at that, fails to smother the sound behind the palm of his hand, while Wanda steps forward with a somewhat amused smile twitching at the ends of her lips. “You called us here, Stark,” she reminds him, approaching him with a little pep in her step. “I was watching Wheel of Fortune, so I hope this doesn’t take too long.”

Tony hums, returns her smile with a somewhat small and forced, yet still genuine, one of his own. They finally talked it out, the two of them, the day after that disaster of a dinner, and it’s tense, sure, but there’s something there, a foundation, mutual apologies and long explanations and something almost close to a thin layer of trust. On both sides, they were holding on to past resentment—Wanda, still subconsciously placing blame on Tony for the bomb that had her a Pietro huddled under a bed in fear for so long, and Tony, knowing that she had gone in his head and made him see the nightmare that caused him to make Ultron—but, they can’t change the past, and they both realize and own up to the fact that they’ve done horrible things, and they want to do better now. Tony respects her, and she respects him, too. Which is why his tone is friendly when he tells her, “I’ll make it quick, I promise.”

“What is this about, Tony?” Steve asks, and he sounds relaxed, that bastard, like he has a place in this lab and isn’t an intrusion against the norm. Wanda is not an intrusion, Sam is not an intrusion, and if Barton and Lang were here (which they will be, in a few days), they wouldn’t be intrusions, either, because Tony has actually talked to them, sat down with them and had in depth conversations and properly apologized and heard them do the same. Steve has not done that. Barnes hasn’t, either, but that’s because Barnes is still in Wakanda for a few more weeks, so jury’s out on how that will go.

The point is, Tony doesn’t like that Steve seems relaxed in his lab, but he just grits his teeth and nods towards the table, where the rest of the boxes sit. “Take a look,” he says, arms crossed over his chest and shoulders hunched a bit, defensive without really meaning to be. “They’re, uh—mostly for the kids, to be honest, but I figured a simple version could be helpful for the team, when the team is officially back together. So, with theirs, it has—there’s two buttons for them, but ours all just have one. For us—” he nods towards Pepper and May and Happy and Rhodey, “—if we press the button once, it just alerts each other, and it only alerts everyone else if we press it twice. For you guys, you just press it once and it alerts everyone. It’s basically a panic button, connected to my personal satellite so it’s nearly impossible to hack and works pretty much anywhere. Waterproof, made with Vibranium, so practically indestructible, and there’s one for Barnes, too, when he gets here. It also can track vitals, so if anyone’s ever kidnapped or goes missing or whatever, we can make sure that person is still alive. Really, the only way this thing won’t work is if you get the arm it’s on cut off or something, and even then it should be able to detect the different between dead body and lost limb. And, like I told the munchkins, if you want it to look different, be a different color or whatever, I can customize it however you want.”

“Speaking of munchkins,” Rhodey speaks up, looking over at the kids—Peter is seemingly taking a break, hunched over and leaning against Harley, who’s actually following through with the Morse code quizzing, judging by the look of concentration on Miles’s face—and sporting a little smile. “That’s the new one, right? The one that those two apparently adopted? Miles, I think you said?”

Tony rolls his eyes, but nods, too. “Yeah, that’s him. A little sweetheart, but Harley keeps calling me grandpa, now, because apparently them being unofficial teenage dads means I’m suddenly a grandfather. Which is bullshit, ‘cause they haven’t started calling Pep, May, or Angie anything different. Just me.”

From across the room, Harley helpfully calls out, “It’s to make fun of your age!”

“You’re a little shit!” Tony calls back, tone chirpy and light, only slightly sarcastic.

“The way you talk about kids is a lot like how most people talk about pets,” Natasha points out, standing to Steve’s left, a perfect brow arched and a barely there smile on her features. “And you never mentioned a Miles to us.”

And Tony’s voice takes on a slightly harsher tone as he tells her, “That’s because it’s not your fucking business, Romanov.”

Steve, with a deep frown on his features, shakes his head. “No, she has a point. You told us about the others, but you never told us about him. Why?”

“’Cause he’s twelve years old and doesn’t need to be on your radar of shit you two decide to stick your nose in,” Tony practically sneers, his eyes narrowed down into a glare. “Like I said, none of your business. Don’t bother him or I swear to god, Rogers, my foot will be so far up your ass you’ll taste it.”

“That’s pretty graphic, Mister Stark,” Peter calls out, sounding groggy. “There’s a baby present.”

Miles splutters, looking up with wide eyes. “I’m not—I’m not a baby!”

Harley reaches over and pinches his cheek, cooing, “Aw, you’re so cute when you’re flustered! Peter, look at ‘im! He’s adorable! Peter, look—Pete, honey, you’re not looking. Look at our son. _Peter._ I’ll kick your ass, Parker. Look at him. Peter Benjamin Parker, pay attention to our child before I dump you.”

“Don’t full name me,” Peter murmurs, nose crinkled as he lifts his head from Harley’s shoulder to frown at him. “You sound like an actual dad when you full name people. It’s kind of terrifying.”

“That’s the point,” Harley huffs, before turning back to Miles, still pinching his cheek and snickering at the annoyed look on Miles’s face. “What’s your middle name? I need to be able to full name you.”

A grimace forms on Miles face. “No.”

Harley looks offended. “That’s not even—did you really just say _no?_ Not even _I’m not telling you,_ which would be the proper way to say no to that, but just—just the word no. Which doesn’t even work, like, wording wise, or—or grammatically, or whatever the fuck—”

Peter slaps a hand over Harley’s mouth with a gasp. “Don’t say fuck!”

The attempted response is muffled by Peter’s palm. Miles, on his part, looks like he’s regretting ever meeting the two of them, glancing over at Tony in some kind of despair, Harley still relentlessly pinching his cheek even as he struggles to get Peter’s hand off of his mouth. Tony blinks at them once, somewhat bewildered but mostly fond, and looks back to Steve, brow cocked. “They’re just kids,” he states firmly. “Don’t go digging into their business. We already chewed your ass out once, don’t make us do it again.”

Thankfully, Steve doesn’t appear to want a repeat of said ass chewing, so he simply raises his arms in surrender and says, “Okay. I’m sorry for overstepping.”

And, just like every other half assed apology he’s given so far, it does nothing to ease Tony’s resentment, but he just swallows the lump in his throat, glances between Steve and Natasha with a general lack of trust, and says, “Your names are on the box with your bracelet. There’s a metal piece on one side, that should go against your inner wrist, and your finger print will open it and give access to the panic button underneath. Now, just, grab them and get the hell out of my lab before I have Friday kick your asses out.”

“What if we don’t want them?” Natasha asks, eyeing the devices warily. “I don’t know how I feel about the idea of being tracked twenty four seven, Tony.”

Tony’s face twists up, clearly perplexed. “It’s a _panic button_. The only reason it exists is in case something life threatening happens to you and you want to alert everyone else so we can come save your ass. What the hell makes you think I care enough to bother tracking you in the first place?” A brief look of hurt flashes through Natasha’s eyes, but Tony doesn’t bother acknowledging it, instead just shaking his head with an aggravated sigh and saying, “Whatever, it’s up to you. Don’t want it, don’t take it.”

“You said it reads vitals,” Natasha points out.

“So that we can tell if you’re alive _after you press the fucking panic button.”_

“But the fact that it reads vitals and is able to track our location doesn’t sit right with me. It’s not—”

Before Nat can go on with her reasoning, the bracelet on Tony’s wrist—which has been secured in place since he finished it this morning—starts to vibrate, and it only takes a moment to figure out why when it vibrates in four quick buzzes, spelling out an H in Morse code. Instantly, he looks over to find Harley already looking at him, hand still poised over the panic button that he just pressed, and with a look of faux innocence, he calls out, “Pete and I don’t remember anything below the ninety first floor. We need a tour guide or else we’ll get lost and die of thirst in a random conference room somewhere.”

Tony just stares at him for a moment, processing his words, before he lets out a loud snort and shakes his head, lips stretching out in a grin. Turning back to Nat, he simply tells him, “Either take it or leave it. The choice is yours, and it doesn’t bother me either way. Just don’t try to make me feel bad if something goes to shit and you can’t let anyone know. Last time I try to do something nice for a traitor.”

“Dramatic language,” Natasha muses. “I’m not sure if you—”

“Yeah, I’m done with this conversation,” Tony scoffs, pushing off the table and crossing the room briskly. “If you want it customized, tell Friday and leave it on the table and I’ll get to it later. Until then, I have a tour to give to a twelve year old genius and two teenage dumbasses who are probably going to come up with a crappy excuse to run off and make out somewhere like the shitty liars that they always have been. Have a good day. Or don’t. I don’t give a shit either way.”

Peter lets out some weird kind of indignant squawk as Harley pulls him to his feet, Miles already bouncing from foot to foot excitedly. “We’re not shitty liars,” Harley huffs, rolling his eyes.

As they follow Tony out of the lab, the ones still standing by the table can hear the way Tony barks out a disbelieving laugh, though the doors close before anyone can pick up his response. Nat stares at the closed doors with her lips pressed into a thin line, eyes squinted a bit, while Steve just lets out a long, slow sigh, turning to Sam and asking, “Why doesn’t he hate you? You were on the run, too.”

“And I talked to him about it,” Sam says simply, shrugging. “And I care about Pete, and now Harley, too. I haven’t shit on their parenting by saying something blatantly rude and intrusive and a little bit homophobic sounding, too, and when he says there’s a line, I don’t cross it. Do you want me to keep going? Because I can, since you can’t seem to see the obvious, Captain Dumbass.”

Steve grimaces. “Message received.”

“I’m not sure it has,” Pepper murmurs, scanning over the boxes before spotting the one with her name on it, swiping it up quickly. May grabs hers, as well, and without bothering to wait any longer, the two of them spin around and march over to the private elevator, not even waiting for Happy or Rhodey before instructing Friday to take them to the penthouse.

Rhodey snorts as the elevator doors slide shut, shaking his head with something incredulous and slightly amused shining in his eyes. “Word of advice,” he says, looking at both Steve and Nat with a quirked brow and a protective sort of sternness written in the clench of his jaw. “Stop doubting him and assuming shit that isn’t your business. Ever since meeting Tony, the both of you have bounced back and forth between being like the family he craved and tearing him down with accusations and a lack of trust. He would have died and killed for both of you, and you used him, whether you realize it or not. And now he doesn’t need you for family, because he’s got a really good one, a strong one, consisting of people who actually love him and care about him and would never make him feel the way you did. And you can bet your skinny white asses that none of us would have left him to freeze in a Siberian bunker, but we’re not even going to try and touch on that right now because I know talking about it will just make me want to punch someone. Point is, you already burnt your bridges, so don’t try to walk on something that isn’t there. You gotta start from the bottom, with the foundations. Things like not digging into his shit and leaving the kids alone are a good place to start, if that wasn’t clear enough.”

With his own box in hand, Rhodey leaves after that, giving nobody a chance to respond. Happy just chuckles, grabs his bracelet, and says, “You had that one coming,” before going after Rhodey.

A silence settles over the lab after their departure, only broken when Wanda reaches forward to grab her own box and make a brisk exit. Sam follows after her, his box in hand, leaving Nat and Steve on their own, staring at their own names scribbled on to the boxes with bracelets made just for them. “They’re right,” Nat says simply, deadpan and a little bit exhausted. “Both of us broke his trust. We have to earn it back, not act like we already deserve it.”

“I know,” Steve murmurs, hushed. He looks away from the box, swallows something thick in his throat, and then stops when his eyes catch on something red and blue and familiar sitting on a table across the room. He nudges Nat, brows furrowed a bit. “Do you see that?”

Nat glances over, then forces her eyes back to Steve. “Not our business,” she states.

“That’s Spider-Man’s suit,” Steve says. “I’ve seen him on the news a few times since we got back. He’s the same guy from Germany, too. Sounded young. Where do you think he came from?”

“Steve,” Nat says, tone insistent. “It’s not our business. This isn’t how we build trust.”

But already Steve’s mind is spinning, eyes narrowed in on the suit. “When I asked, he said he was from Queens.” He thinks back, something tugging in his brain, until he remembers Sam mentioning something about Peter, about how he’s alright for a Queens kid, or something along those lines. It was after Sam came back to their floor after playing video games with Peter and Harley for a while, and he had seemed content and happy when he got back, and Steve had asked what Peter is really like, since his only official experience with Peter Parker was when he had pissed the kid off at dinner and had been yelled at for it.

Natasha shakes her head. _“Steve.”_

“Peter is from Queens, Nat,” Steve murmurs, the dots already connecting in his head. “Do you think—?”

“I think nothing,” Natasha interrupts. “I think nothing, I _assume_ nothing, and I refuse to go digging. You heard Rhodes, Steve. We can’t do this, not when he already hates being around us. Let it go.”

And Steve thinks that he can’t let it go, because if his assumption is right, then there’s a sixteen year old kid who goes out on the street to fight crime and Tony lets it happen, even helps him do it, apparently, and that is not okay. But he has no proof, is only drawing conclusions based on two simple little things that may or may not be connected, and he can’t allow that suspicion effect the already shaky ground he stands on. So, even though he doesn’t want to, Steve just nods, grabs the box with his name on it, and says, “You’re right. I won’t pry. I promise.”

If Nat doesn’t believe it, she doesn’t let it show, only grabs her own box with a nod and a simple, “Good,” before spinning on her heel to march out of the lab. Steve falters, glances at the suit, and then shakes his head, trying to clear the thoughts from his mind, before following after her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not to self promo but uh i posted the first chapter of a reader chooses the path zombie apocalypse au ft. parkner and ironstrange and thorbruce among other ships (eventually - the first few chapters don't include ships) and i'm super hyped about it and it's called rotten and if u wanna read the first chap and vote on the first big choice of the fic then that would be super super rad pls and thank u anyway here's wonderwall 
> 
> also i didnt mean for the parkner scenes in this to be so fucking cheesy and soft but oh my god eighteen

** 3\. the birthday**

To be completely honest, Peter didn’t really think he’d make it to seventeen.

It’s not a depressing thought, really, just a brutally honest one, because he’s nearly died a handful of times, has been shot and stabbed and put on bed rest and is currently still healing from having his very atoms try to rip themselves apart because of stupid alien tech that he has to track down once he’s in good enough shape to go on patrol again. Really, with that kind of shit being his norm, it’s not much of a surprise that waking up on his birthday is kind of a shock, considering the fact that he kind of thought he’d be dead before he could get here. Like, six feet under, buried between his parents and Uncle Ben, maybe living in some kind of after life, if one even exists. It’s not pessimistic, it’s just realistic.

“I’m seventeen,” he says out loud, staring up at the blurry ass ceiling because his eyes are still struggling to focus after the whole going temporarily blind incident. The words feel unnatural and strange on his tongue, so he tries to say it again. “I’m Peter Parker, and I’m seventeen years old.”

“Happy Birthday, Mr. Parker,” Friday tells him. “Mr. Keener is approaching your room.”

Peter grins, reaches over to grapple for the glasses on his nightstand—no longer the weird, dough bag sunglasses that he was wearing before, because his eyes have healed enough that they’re back to his normal level of light sensitive rather than the super sensitive that they were before, but instead some normal looking glasses that help his eyes focus—and pushes them up the slope of his nose. Just in time, too, as there’s only a few short seconds that pass before the door is carefully pushed open, and when he looks over, he can see the mop of mussed of blond hair peaking around the door, then sleep-hazed blue eyes that brighten when they meet Peter’s, and then Harley is padding quietly into the room, softly pushing the door shut again behind him before he scurries over to Peter’s bed and practically jump on him, wasting no time before he full on latches on to him like a clingy koala, arms wrapping around shoulders, legs locking around his waist, and Peter just breathes out a laugh and says, “Hey.”

Harley props his chin on Peter’s chest and grins at him. “Hey yourself, birthday boy. Sleep well?”

Shrugging, Peter tells him, “Well enough, I guess. The super meds Helen gave me are still knocking me out so hard that I’m not dreaming, so I’m probably more well rested now than I have been since I was four years old.” Looping his arms around Harley to clasp against his lower back, he scans over Harley’s features and purses his lips in a frown. “How about you? You look tired.”

“I’m _great,”_ Harley says instantly, sort of breathes it out with a giddy grin on his face, excitement lighting up his eyes. “I stayed up late to finish one of your birthday presents ‘cause I couldn’t work on it while you were in the lab, obviously, so I had to wait until after you went to bed, but I finished it and it’s so cheesy but I know you’re gonna love it. So, tired, yeah, but that’s why I had Friday wake me up when you did, ‘cause it’s your birthday and the birthday boy gets to sleep in and I thought your first present from me could be cuddling and watching a movie until we fall back asleep, or something. If you want.”

“First of how many?” Peter asks, brows raising slightly.

There’s a mischievous glint in Harley’s eyes as he shrugs. “Definitely more than two.”

Peter snorts, rolling his eyes. “Thanks, that’s helpful.”

“I’m not trying to be helpful,” Harley snickers, shuffling up a bit until he can press a kiss to Peter’s cheek, then another to the tip of his nose. “Matter of fact, I’m trying to be the opposite of helpful and annoy the hell out of you so that there’s no way for you to guess everything I have planned for today. And there’s, like, a lot planned, after the whole watching a movie and sleeping in thing, so you—” another kiss, this time to Peter’s temple, “—can just let me be an annoying asshole—” another, to his forehead, now, gentle and soft lips and so, so fond, “—and spoil you rotten because you’re seventeen and you’re alive and you deserve it. Okay?” Then, before Peter can do much more than avert his eyes with a blush climbing up his neck, Harley goes from pressing gentle kissing against his skin to peppering his entire face with as many quick little pecks as possible, making exaggerated mwah! sounds with each and every one.

Laughing lightly, Peter pushes at Harley’s shoulder lightly, not actually trying to move him, rather just trying to make his faux annoyance more believable as he giggles out, “Harley, stop, oh my god—”

Harley doesn’t stop, instead gets more dramatic, draws back his arms and cups Peter’s face in his hands, presses his palms closer until Peter is making funny looking fish lips that make Harley giggle, too, until they’re both just giggling quietly while Harley continues to smack quick little kisses on top of Peter’s little freckles and moles that are hard to see unless you’re looking closely.

It’s an adorable little moment, one to think back on and smile at.

Until it isn’t.

“Harley, stop,” Peter says again, but his smile is gone, his skin is a shade paler than it was a second prior, and, unfortunately, Harley has become quite accustomed to Peter’s I’m about to throw up voice, thanks to the past few weeks consisting of a lot of puking while Peter’s body struggles to heal.

Thankfully, because of the frequency of upchucking instances recently, Harley only has to shift over until he’s no longer sprawled on top of Peter and reaches over for the bucket that’s been waiting by Peter’s bed for moments like this, carefully but frantically pushing it into Peter’s lap, and it’s kind of sad how used to this that he is, not even flinching when Peter white knuckles the edges of the bucket and lets out a rough gag. Instead, Harley reaches over, a pang in his chest as he rubs soothing circles against Peter’s back and murmurs gently, things like, “Let it out, Pete,” and, “It’ll be over soon.”

After a few shaky rounds of puking interrupted by only a few moments of shaky anticipation and followed by a minute or two of dry heaving, Peter finally pulls his head back, his chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath, shoulders slumped and skin clammy. Thanks to his new glasses not being tinted, Harley can see the exhaustion in his eyes—not physical exhaustion, but mental, so clearly sick and tired of being weakened by something that’s taking far too long to heal. It makes Harley’s heart hurt.

“Feel better?” Harley asks, soft and gentle, still tracing patterns across Peter’s back to give him a calming feeling to focus on. “That one seemed to last longer than usual.”

Peter grimaces a bit, pushing the bucket a little bit further from his face, likely to try and escape the rancid smell, only to stop as he glances down and sees the swirls of scarlet mixed in to the half digested food, bile, and stomach acid. With a sigh, he says, “Fri, can you—?”

“Doctor Cho was alerted as soon as I detected blood,” Friday informs him. “She is on her way.”

“Blood?” Harley repeats, a bit meek. “I thought she said you were healed enough that this should stop.”

Moving slow, hands a little bit shaky, Peter reaches over and settles the bucket back on the floor before slumping back against his pillows, letting his eyes flutter shut. “It’s supposed to, yeah,” he says. “Helen said that there might be some residual small internal stuff that could reopen and bleed a little, since my body has been working in overdrive trying to heal itself that some of it healed a little wrong and is purposefully redoing things. She also said that my throat is probably raw from puking so much, and since it’s such a minor thing, my healing probably won’t try to fix it until everything else is in order, which is probably gonna take at least another week or two, since that stupid alien shit is still just strong enough to slow my healing down, so there’s a good chance it’s just blood from my throat, but she also said that if there’s blood again, then she needs to come up and check, just to make sure it’s not serious.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Harley offers, gnawing on his lower lip anxiously.

Peter nods. “Yeah, exactly. But, I mean, it’s been two, almost three weeks, and Helen says I’m probably at about the halfway point in the whole recovery process. My healing is only gonna get stronger from here, since the last of that stupid alien shit is almost completely out of his system, so I’ll hopefully be back to normal pretty soon. Which would be nice. I’m going insane without Spider-Man.”

Moving over a bit, Harley sits directly next to Peter, knowing that he’ll have to save the cuddling until after Helen gets up here and does her check-up, and nudges their shoulders together. “They’ve got it covered,” he reminds Peter. “Rhodey and Tony have been taking turns going out every day to keep an eye on the local stuff while you’re out of commission, and Vision has been helping them out. Clint and his family are staying for a few weeks, so he’s been going out, too. Pretty sure Scott and Hope went out with him before they flew back to California. Sam even offered to risk breaking house arrest just to do some patrolling for you. So, Spidey’s not on the streets, no, but his friends are covering for him. It’s okay.”

Before Peter can do much more than let out a long, slow breath, brows pinching together in thought, the door clicks open and Helen walks in, a very disgruntled looking Tony that’s either just rolled out of bed or spent a rough all nighter in the lab stumbling in after her. Voice raspy from what could be sleep or a lack thereof, Tony asks, “You doing alright, kiddo?”

“I feel like I should be asking you that,” Peter says. “You look like you got hit by a bus.”

Tony blinks once, slowly, then looks down at himself with a frown. “I do?”

“It’s not a good look,” Harley says solemnly. “I think there’s oil in your hair.”

“In my—?” Tony reaches up, touches his hair, and then grimaces. “Oh, that’s—Christ, okay, I need a shower, holy shit. But that doesn’t—Pete, you feel okay? Need anything? Ginger Ale?”

Peter shakes his head, but a smile is playing at his lips. “I’m good, Mister Stark,” he assures. “Just got a little nauseous, but that’s kinda become the norm recently. Crappy way to start my birthday, though.”

Suddenly, Tony lurches, snapping his fingers together and pointing at Peter with wide eyes. “Shit! Right! That’s what I was—I was on my way to tell you happy birthday and let you know that Rhodey and Sam are gonna be making a big breakfast for you at around ten thirty ish, ‘cause Harley told me last night about his plan to have a lazy morning or whatever and I wanted you to know when you should head to the kitchen, but on my way up here, I ran into Helen, and she said you needed a check-up and I got distracted and completely spaced on the reason why I was—Jesus, I need to shut up. Happy birthday, kid.”

“Thanks, Mister Stark,” Peter grins. “You can tell me again later, after you’ve showered.”

Tony looks down at himself again and sighs. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Looking back up, he glances between Harley and Peter and asks, “See you two at breakfast? Ten thirty on the dot, right?”

“Birthday boy has special rights to be fashionably late,” Harley states simply. “Ten thirty five.”

Tony looks confused, but just shrugs, says, “Sure, whatever,” and then leaves the room.

As soon as he’s gone, Helen faces the bed, hands on her hips and a firm expression on her face. “Blood?”

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Not a lot, probably just the throat, but you said to have you check anyway.”

“That I did,” Helen nods, looking pleased by Peter following her instructions—probably because Peter has adamantly been doing things she said he shouldn’t ever since he was taken off of bed rest, because he’s a stubborn teenager through and through, no matter how big of a heart he has. “Friday, scan him.”

“I apologize, Captain Rogers, but you are not permitted above this level.”

Steve crosses his arms over his chest, feeling his patience wearing a little thin, though he quickly tries to reel it in and put a lid on it, knowing that any sort of frustration will only be misconstrued. He just wants to talk to Tony—and _really_ talk to him, too, because he’s tired of jumping to conclusions, tired of the bickering and the tension and how badly this coming home has gone. It’s painful, in a sense, to see how everyone around him is getting along, acting like family, while him—and Nat, as well, though she has been distancing herself from her usual nosiness and sticking strictly to the rules given, trying to build up that foundation of trust—keep getting frowned at and ignored. Not to say that they don’t deserve it, but Steve just wishes he could press fast forward and skip ahead to the part where they’re all okay again.

Unfortunately, that’s not something he can do. So, he’s figured out what he wants to say, wrote it down and rewrote it a hundred times until it felt perfect, and now all he needs is to find Tony and say it, say everything, and be honest about it, too. Because there’s something Steve has come to realize.

Tony never lies.

He can be sneaky, sure, and hide truths, but outright lying? That’s not his think. He’s a blunt man, the kind of guy who looked at a notecard giving him the perfect alibi and chose to ignore it, chose to look into the camera and tell the world that he’s Iron Man. He shared his home address to a terrorist, has always made his opinion loud and clear, even in the most inconvenient of times, and even when the truth hurts, he’s said it. And Steve had somehow convinced himself that the best course of acting after growing the suspicion that Hydra had used Bucky to kill Howard and Maria Stark was to lie about it.

Lying leads to lack of trust, and Steve had willingly done it. Now, he needs to fix what he broke.

“Please,” Steve says, trying not to sound as desperate as he feels. “Just ask Tony to give me temporary access. I need to talk to him and—and apologize. I need to fix this, Friday. _Please.”_

Friday, after a moment, tells him, “I’m sorry, Captain. Boss has given orders to keep any and all unwanted visitors away from their personal floors. He is willing to speak with you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Steve repeats, frowning. There’s adrenaline in his veins, a need to do this now, before he forgets what he wrote down, before nerves kick in and makes him back out last minute. He needs to do this today. Something in him is insisting so. “I need to talk to him today, Friday.”

“You may speak with Boss tomorrow,” Friday says.

“But—”

A hand settles on his shoulder then, and when he looks over, he finds Sam giving him a weird look, sympathetic smile paired with somewhat protective eyes. “Can’t fight it, Cap,” he says surely, no hint of doubt in his voice. “He’s not gonna budge. He’s busy, and begging ain’t gonna change that.”

Steve’s hands clench and unclench by his sides, brows furrowed. “I need to talk to him, Sam.”

“I know you do,” Sam nods. “And I think you should, but not today. If you try, he’ll hate you more.”

“Why?” Steve questions, shaking his head. “What’s so important about today?”

And Sam’s hand drops so suddenly, it’s like he’s been burned, though nothing in his expression changes. “It’s Peter’s birthday,” he answers simply, and his voice is slightly guarded, just enough for Steve to notice. “He almost didn’t make it to this one, with the whole accident that happened before we came back. Everyone’s taking it pretty seriously, spoiling the little brat rotten with gifts and stuff. Starting with a big ass breakfast that I’m supposed to be upstairs helping Rhodey make right now.”

Right. Peter. Something else he needs to apologize about, because Steve definitely didn’t make a good first impression there, and if he wants to build some kind of trust, some kind of friendship, with Tony again, he’ll need to mend that mess. Plus, Steve is still fairly certain that Peter might be the wall crawler that Steve fought in Germany, which is something he needs to address with Tony, because keeping his suspicious to himself feels like he’s lying again. Maybe Tony will get pissed off and protective about it, but Steve wants to put it on the table, wants to make it clear that he won’t pry, won’t dig, and he won’t assume the worst, either. If he’s going to fix this, he’s going to do it right.

Maybe it’s a good thing Tony won’t talk to Steve today. He needs to find out how to bring up that topic before he tries to actually do it, and now he’s got a whole day to figure it out.

“If you think he’ll want to hear it, tell the kid I said happy birthday,” Steve says, stepping away to give Sam access to the elevator. “He probably won’t want to hear it, which is fine, but if you think he will.”

Sam hesitates, then nods, and that protective glimmer in his eyes fizzles away, just a bit. “Okay.”

Steve waits until Sam steps into the elevator and the doors slide shut before he spins on his heel, heading back to his room and trying not to think about how much he wishes he were invited to celebrate the kids birthday, too. He doesn’t deserve to be up there, still hardly know Peter or Harley or their friends or Miles, has done nothing but say the wrong thing and make things worse.

He has a day, though, to figure out the right thing to say, and he plans to do just that.

After breakfast, Harley and Tony both lead him to the lab, with promises that it won’t take long and that they’ll be right back in the penthouse to hang out with everyone else in a jiffy. Peter doesn’t think he’s ever heard Tony say the word jiffy before, but he doesn’t point that out, just follows after them with a content feeling in his chest, stomach full and not nauseous, thanks to the meds that Helen told him to take after his (thankfully, rather quick and successful) check-up this morning. They’re anti-nausea, and they’re supposed to be strong enough to last for twelve hours despite his metabolism, though she made it clear that the formula might need tweaking and they could potentially wear off sooner. It’s been three hours so far, and he feels just fine, though—outside of the soreness, but he can manage that, and if it gets too bad, they’ll give him a dose of Cap’s old pain killers to bring it down to something manageable again—and he’s got a pep in his step as he trails down the hallway and tries not to get too curious.

“I get to go first,” Tony says the second they enter the lab. Harley pouts, looking ready to protest, but Tony holds up a hand and tells him, “I’ll go quick, and then I’ll leave, because you two are gross and mushy and I don’t want to witness any more awkward teenage romance than necessary. Besides, your nerd squad is supposed to be here in twenty minutes, so we both gotta make this quick. Got it?”

Harley crosses his arms over his chest, still looking rather upset about having to wait, but he just shrugs and grumbles out, “Yeah, whatever. That’s fine, I guess.”

Peter thinks he looks like a kicked puppy. He doesn’t say this, just turns to Tony and grins excitedly. Tony chuckles, rolls his eyes, and then waves him over to the main holo-table. “So, this comes with an explanation, but I’ll keep it brief,” he starts, pulling up a file and swiping through it quickly, brows furrowed in concentration. Peter glances at the file names, but they all seem to just be titles with unrecognizable sequences of letters and numbers, stuff that Peter can’t figure out without proper context. “Basically,” Tony goes on, pulling open one last file, though he doesn’t display what’s in said file just yet, just looks at Peter as he says, “I thought about how your sweet sixteen was a bit of a bust, since May wouldn’t let me buy you a new car or anything like that, and I had no clue what else to do because I always assumed sweet sixteens involved cars, right? And all I got you last year was that dumb little Iron Man plushie that you actually liked—”

“And that I got you the matching Spider-Man plushie for,” Peter reminds him, looking proud.

Tony rolls his eyes again, but he’s sporting a wide smile as he does so. “Yeah, that, too. But, as I was saying, I was thinking about how a car still feels necessary, but also how I know you want more personal things and would probably have a heart attack if I spent that much money on you, and then I talked to May and we found a sort of middle ground. So, my main present to you—because I got you more stuff, but this is the big one, and the rest is wrapped up in boxes upstairs—is this.”

Quickly, he brings up the file and projects it in front of them. Instantly, Peter leans forward, looking at the holographic blueprint in front of him, and his eyes go wider and wider the more he takes it in—the design, the tech, everything. It’s a car, alright, but it’s the perfect balance between personalized and simple, to the point that, on a busy street, it’d blend in to the common eye, but upon closer inspection, it’s clear that it’s not from any known brand or company. The interior design has that same balance, and even the color, a deep blue that almost looks black yet still seems to match with the blue on his suit, just feels _right._ Somehow, despite Peter having never considered what his dream car may be, Tony has managed to design it, and all Peter can think to do is breathe out a meek little, “This is… for me?”

“All yours,” Tony confirms, nodding. “Once we build her, anyway.”

“Build her?” Peter questions, blinking owlishly, unable to look away from what’s in front of him.

Tony’s smile grows. “Yeah. Me, you, Harley, and Miles. And your friends, if you want them to help. Whoever you want to build this with. And if you want anything to change, just let me know—”

“No!” Peter cuts in, looking over at Tony and shaking his head. “No, this—Mister Stark, this is _perfect.”_

Looking relieved, Tony nods, scans over the blueprint with some kind of pride in his eyes, and then nods again. “Good,” he says. “It’s for you. It needs to be perfect. Couldn’t stop working on it until it was, only to realize that it would never feel good enough unless you liked it, so I stopped with this.”

Then, with a snicker, Harley says, “You realize our cars will be Spidey colored, right? Blue and red?”

Peter brightens, grinning. “Oh my god. That makes it even better.”

“Gross,” Tony says, but he just seems fond as he wraps up Peter in a warm hug, keeps him there just a little longer than necessary, and then ruffles his hair when he lets go. “We’ll talk more about the car later,” he tells Peter. “Including what May and I decided to do about you getting your license. But, for now, I’ll leave you two to it, but don’t be longer than ten minutes, okay? Everyone wants a chance to spoil the birthday spider. Just ‘cause you’re dating him—” he levels Harley a deadpan look, “—doesn’t mean you can keep him from everyone else. Ten minutes, okay? Friday will let you know when it’s up.”

“Thank you,” Peter says. And then, because it doesn’t seem like enough: “For everything. All of it.”

Tony looks like he might actually cry a bit at that, but he just ruffles Peter’s hair even more, smiles some sort of wobbly smile, and says, “Of course, Pete,” before he turns and leaves the lab.

For a moment, Harley and Peter only stare after Tony, even when he’s gone. Then, Harley says, “He’s totally crying in the hall right now. Like, without a doubt, weeping like a fuckin’ baby.”

“I’m feeling pretty weepy, too,” Peter admits, and then he sniffles a bit, just to prove it, waving his hands in front of his face to dry his misty eyes. Harley coos at him, pokes him in the cheek and lets out a laugh when Peter glares at him. “Shut up and show me what you said you were working up last night.”

Instantly, Harley beams, reaching down and grabbing Peter’s left hand. “Gladly,” he chirps, practically vibrating with excitement. He uses their interlocked hands to raise Peter’s arm in the air, quirking a brow a bit, looking smug. “But first, do you notice something a little off?”

Peter squints, confused. “What are you—?”

Harley pushes down the sleeve of Peter’s sweatshirt. “Your bracelet.”

“My—?” Peter stops, looking over at his bare wrist, and his jaw drops a bit when he realizes that the bracelet that Tony gave him last week, that one that Peter hasn’t taken off since getting it, is gone. Eyes snapping to Harley, both suspicious and intrigued, he asks, “Where is this going, Keener?”

“I did something,” is what Harley tells him, no longer smug, just genuinely grinning with joy as he tugs Peter over to their workbench. “It was a kind of—kind of last minute idea, which is why I ended up doing it last night after you went to bed—and, also, I had to wait until you were asleep because I needed your bracelet, not just because it’s your birthday or whatever bullshit I said this morning. I got you other stuff, too, and I still have the—the plans, the reservation at that restaurant you were talking about a few weeks ago, but that’s not until next Friday, a sort of late present, I guess, but I thought of this yesterday and I just felt like I needed to do it, and it’s—it’s brilliant. It’s so simple and cheesy but it’s perfect.”

Now one hundred percent intrigued, Peter asks, “What is it?”

Dropping Peter’s hand, Harley spins around and opens the top drawer closest to them—when he’s trying to hide things in the lab, he tends to pick random drawers, knowing that Peter never looks through them, which is how he’s managed to keep so many little projects and gifts a surprise—and pulls out Peter’s bracelet, as well as a second one. “This one’s mine,” he explains when he sees Peter looking at it. “I haven’t actually, um—well, I kind of tested it by wearing one on one wrist and one on the other, but that’s not the same, so it might be a little buggy, but it should work. I’m, like, ninety nine percent sure it does.”

“I’m confused,” Peter says, a bit slow, as he takes his bracelet from Harley and flips it over, trying to examine it properly. As far as he can tell, nothing is different than before. “It looks the same.”

“It’s supposed to.” Harley is buzzing with anticipation. “Put it on.”

Though unsure about what to expect, Peter does as asked, trusting that everything will be made clear as he slides the bracelet on to his wrist, feeling as the Vibranium-woven fabric instantly molds itself to fit snugly against his wrist. He slides it around until the metal panel protecting the panic buttons is against his inner wrist, and then he looks at Harley with raised brows. “Okay, now what?”

Sinking his teeth in to his lower lip to try and contain his grin, Harley tells him, “Tap the metal twice.”

This does nothing to lessen Peter’s confusion—the metal is nano tech that’s meant to melt into the rest of the bracelet with his fingerprint to reveal the panic buttons, how is he supposed to tap it twice when simply touching it will make the metal move?—but he doesn’t question it out loud, only silently ponders what Harley’s building up to as he turns his wrist over and brings the pad of his right pointer finger down, surprised when the panel does not immediately melt away like it’s meant to. Brows furrowed, he lifts his finger and brings it back down, tapping against the metal a second time, and then he lets his right hand drop to dangle as his side and waits, either for further instruction or for something to change.

At first, he doesn’t notice it. He’s too busy waiting that the subtle feeling is subconsciously pushed away, but them he realizes that there’s an odd pulsing coming from the bracelet. He frowns, focuses his senses on the feeling to try and figure out what it is, and then—

“Wait.” Peter’s head snaps up, looking at Harley with wide, startled eyes. The feeling is more prominent now that he’s focusing on it, familiar and steady. “Harley, are you—is—is that your heartbeat?

Instantly, Harley nods. “Yeah, it’s—well, not literally, obviously, but it’s, um—I used the connection between our bracelets—the whole press the blue button once and it just alerts each other thing—and I tweaked the, um—the fingerprint thing, just a little, with Tony’s help and permission, of course, so now you have to keep your finger on it for three seconds to open the panel, and you can tap it twice to start a simulation of—of my heartbeat, and when you do, it goes both ways, so I can feel yours, too, and then to stop it, you just tap it twice again. I just thought that it might be kind of helpful, you know? Since heartbeats are kind of a grounding point for you, and ever since seeing you almost die I’ve been kind of constantly checking your pulse to make sure it’s steady, then maybe, when we’re starting to feel a little antsy or something, we can open up that simulation and it can help us calm down before we can spiral, if that makes sense. And if you don’t like it, I kept track of everything I did so I know how to reverse it, but I just thought it could help, and I wanted to do something, like, super cheesy for you. ‘Cause. Y’know.”

“Eighteen,” Peter says, sort of offers it, his eyes glimmering with unshed tears and his lips pulled back into a grin so wide that it looks painful. “That’s why I was cheesy on your birthday. Because of eighteen.”

Harley lets out a long, slow breath and nods. “Yeah. Exactly.” Then, glancing down at Peter’s bracelet and then back up at his awe struck features, he asks, “Do you… do you like it?”’

Peter has to swallow the lump in his throat before he’s able to say, “Harley, I love it. I—I love—”

“Eighteen,” Harley cuts in quickly, but he’s blinking back tears, too. “It was your idea. You can’t break the deal when you’re the one who made the deal, Parker. That’s not how it works.”

Letting out a laugh that sounds just a little delirious, Peter ducks his head in a nod, looks down at his bracelet and feels the simulation of Harley’s heartbeat pressed against his pulse point. “You’re right,” he murmurs, unable to push down his wobbly, wonderful smile. “But you know that I mean it, don’t you?

Peter feels the way Harley’s heartbeat accelerates, just a bit. “I know. And you know, too, right?”

“Yeah.” Peter looks back up, reaches forward because he needs to hug Harley right this second or he might actually explode, and, muffled by the material of Harley’s shirt, nose pressed to the side of his neck and heart thundering in his chest, he tells him, “I can feel it,” because Harley’s heart is racing, too.

When Steve has written and rewritten a new speech a million times, he wanders away from his room, finds the common area on their floor and takes a seat on the sofa. He means to turn on the TV, put on a show or a movie, anything that can grab his attention for an hour or two, but when he parts his lips to ask Friday to play something, no noise comes out. Instead, he just sits there, crosses his arms over his chest and finds himself gazing blankly at the black screen, mind meandering from topic to topic, trying to sort through his jumbled up thoughts and find something sensible in them.

“You look gloomy,” Nat says, sitting next to him with a quirked brow.

Steve hums noncommittedly. “It’s Peter’s birthday,” he tells her. “Sam told me.”

“I know,” Nat says, nodding a bit. When Steve glances at her, she adds, “Clint told me.”

Perking up at that—maybe he can talk to Clint, train with him or something; they haven’t had the chance to properly catch up since he got to the tower a few days ago, but he’s missed being around him, and, while Clint can be known for being just as snarky and immature as serious, Steve has had plenty of deep talks with him about morals and tough decisions—Steve asks her, “Where is he? I think I want to—”

But Nat is already shaking her head. “He’s upstairs,” she answers simply. “Him, Laura, and the kids. I guess they met Peter about a year ago and adore the kid. They were already planning to visit for his birthday, but they decided to extend their visit to a few weeks after we got pardoned.”

“Oh.” Steve slouches back against the sofa, trying not to frown. He had assumed—which, he’s starting to realize, is probably one of his biggest problems—that Clint and the family were visiting to see the Rogues. After all, Clint had been a Rogue, too, but so was Sam, and Wanda, and those two are upstairs right now, as well, celebrating the birthday of someone who really doesn’t like Nat and Steve.

Or just Steve. He’s not sure what Peter thinks of Nat.

Or Harley. Or Miles. Or Ned and MJ, who Steve has yet to see or meet despite being told of them.

“I’m gonna be honest, Rogers,” Nat tells him, tone a little hushed. “I really wish we were upstairs.”

_I miss it,_ is what she means. _I miss them. I miss being a team. I miss being a family. I miss something I shouldn’t because I know that we weren’t really a family, only a group of heroes that didn’t know how to treat each other right, but I miss what we could have been, if we hadn’t messed it up._

Steve thinks, _I miss it, too._

He tells her, “We’ll fix it,” and he hopes that he’s right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part 4 is called "the secrets" >:)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo im plottin the christmas fic (which wont be long, just two, maybe three chapters, but still) and im!! v excited for it its gon be a cute one (and *coughs* might *coughs* feature *coughs* the return *coughs* of some *coughs* other characters *coughs*)
> 
> anyway!! enjoy!! this chap is shorter than i was hoping but i mean this fic doesnt really require the super long chaps so i'm not too worried about it lmao
> 
> also this one is called the secrets because it's addressing the fact that secrets have been kept, and to reveal that steve knows peter's secret. that's about as deep as it gets. i should've made it deeper but eh happy thanksgiving

** 4\. the secrets**

He has it all figured out.

The plan, he believes, is as ironed out as it’s going to get after hours upon hours hunched over the desk in his room and scribbling down every single relevant thought and topic that he thinks might be necessary. He’s gone over it multiple times, until the words felt burned into his brain, and now that he has everything memorized, he feels ready to confront this.

“Friday,” he says, stepping in to the elevator with some kind of excited hope swirling in his chest. “Take me to Tony, please.”

“One moment, Captain Rogers,” Friday tells him. “Waiting for confirmation from Boss that you are temporarily permitted above this level.” Steve waits, probably looks like an impatiently energetic child as he bounces on his toes and taps his fingers against his legs with an antsy sort of energy, until Friday speaks up again to say, “Temporary access granted. Boss has instructed you to meet in his lab.”

Steve falters. “Is anyone else in there?”

“Mr. Keener, Mr. Parker, and Mr. Morales are working on a project, but Boss has already told them to take a break. They are leaving now and will not return until after you leave.”

Nodding to himself, Steve starts going over what he has planned in his head, making sure he’s got it all at the ready. The doors slide shut and the elevator makes it’s journey up, and the entire time, he goes over his game plan again and again—what to start with, what to make sure he doesn’t forget, everything he needs to apologize and own up to. It only take a minute or so before the elevator doors are sliding open again, revealing the hall leading to Tony’s lab, seeing as Steve doesn’t have access to the private elevator that leads directly into the lab, but he feels just that slightest bit more prepared after running it over a final time, and when he makes his way through the doors leading into the lab, he’s almost got a pep in his step, so sure that he’s going to do this, going to make things right—taking the first step towards some sort of stability, some kind of family, some sense of normal, before the Accords and the fighting.

But when he walks in, Tony is hunched over what looks like a beaten up Iron Man suit, elbow deep into the open chest plate, and he doesn’t look up before asking, “What do you want this time, Rogers?”

The question is so blunt and deadpan that it catches Steve off guard, just a little bit, but he doesn’t let that stumble him up, just straightens his shoulders and comes to a stop a few feet away from Tony, arms crossed over his chest and chin held high. “I came to talk,” he says, tone level and even and strong. Tony makes a noncommittal sort of grunt, still not looking up. Steve takes this as permission to continue, so he just clears his throat and begins to go from the top of his plan, starting with, “I’m sorry, Tony.”

“Sure,” Tony snorts, and Steve can see him rolling his eyes. “I’ll pretend I believe it.”

“I’m serious,” Steve insists, then takes a deep breath before he can start to sound defensive, knowing that it won’t help in the slightest if he starts to sound anything other than genuine and apologetic. “I am sorry, and I haven’t done much to show it other than telling you, and just words isn’t enough when it comes to things like this. I understand why you don’t think I’m being sincere, but I’m here to prove to you that I am. All I’m asking is that you listen to what I have to say. What you do after, whether you want me to leave, keep hating me, whatever, that’s up to you, and I’ll respect it. Just, please hear me out.”

Finally, Tony looks away from the suit in front of him, eyes Steve curiously, warily, no hint of trust in his eyes even as he straightens up in his seat, pulls his hands free from the chest plate and grabs a rag to wipe away the oil and the grime on his skin. “Fine,” he murmurs, brows furrowed. “But make it quick, the kids are just getting lunch and I don’t want them to wait longer than necessary.”

It’s something, Steve thinks, grateful for the chance to say anything at all. “I’ll be as quick as I can,” he agrees, nodding, a hopeful smile trying to tug at his lips, though he doesn’t let it grow, instead just takes another deep, steadying breath, and conjures up his list of what to say in his mind. Tony watches him cautiously, features guarded, as Steve gathers his wits and begins from the top of the list, telling him, “To start, I want—no, I—I need to apologize for… for keeping my suspicious from you, about Bucky and your parents. I never knew for sure, and I convinced myself that, if there was a chance it wasn’t true, there was no need to hurt you with it. I made myself believe that I was doing you a favor by keeping it from you, but, looking back on it, I know you value honesty, and I know I made a horrible mistake by not being upfront. Even if it hadn’t ended up being true, the second I thought it was a possibility, I should have told you, and I am so sorry that I didn’t. I have no excuse, and I won’t pretend I do.”

Already, there’s some sort of horrible twist of pain in Tony’s eyes, as if the mere reminder of what happened, of his parents deaths, is enough to make something inside of his break. For a moment, a silence settles over them, as Steve holds his breath and Tony appears to look right through him, before Tony clears his throat and asks, “Is that all?”

Steve tries not to deflate a bit, knowing that this is just the start. “No,” he answers. “I also need to apologize for… well, it’s hard to put into words, but the way I’ve treated you, before Bucky and the Accords. I never really understood you, always assumed the worst of you, and that was unfair to you and rude of me. Trust is a two way street, and I always expected you to trust me when I never really listened to you, never really trusted you. If I had listened to you about the Accords, I could have helped with fixing them, rather than being on the run because I didn’t bother to really understand them. With Ultron, I assumed the worst. Before the battle of New York, I said you’re not a hero, I said that you only care about yourself, and that’s not true in the slightest. You’re not selfish, like I always claimed you were. Everything you do, you do for other people, the ones you care about, the greater good, even if it hurts you. I’m sorry for never seeing that before, and I’m sorry for all the horrible things I said or believed.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tony breathes, burying his face in his hands with some kind of incredulous laugh, shaking his head a bit. “Apology not forgiven, Captain Righteous. Are you done yet? I was kind of planning to start a project with the kiddo’s, and you’re wasting my time with this bullshit.”

“Tony…” Steve trails off, squeezes his eyes shut and exhales slowly. “Two more things. Two questions.”

Letting out a dramatic sigh, Tony waves a hand through the air. “Ask ‘em quick.”

“Is Peter Spider-Man?”

Instantly, Tony is on his feet, his face going a bit red with some kind of fury as he takes a threatening step towards Steve, who instantly steps away in genuine fear at the rage glowing in Tony’s eyes. The tone of Tony’s voice is like glass, harsh and sharp and unforgiving as he sneers, “I swear to fucking god, if you’ve been snooping in his business again, I’m going to kick your ass to the curb so fast—”

“I wasn’t,” Steve rushes out, hands held in the air in some kind of surrender. “I swear to you, Tony, I was not trying to pry. I just saw the Spider-Man suit in here when we came in for the bracelets, and I remembered that Sam said Peter’s from Queens, and Spider-Man told me he was from Queens in Germany, I wasn’t prying, I just connected the dots. I don’t want to hide things from you anymore, I’ve learned my mistake, and I want to make it clear that I won’t tell anyone, I won’t dig, I won’t judge or assume. My first instinct was to be angry, because he’s just a kid, but I was young, too, when I started picking fights with bullies, and I can’t keep assuming the worst from you, like I said. Whatever the story is behind this, I know it’s not my business. I just want you to know that I know, and I want you to know that I—I won’t do anything. I swear to you, I won’t do anything.”

“I know he’s just a kid,” Tony seethes, hands curled into fists at his sides. “You think I don’t realize how young he is? He was even younger when I found him, Rogers. A fourteen year old running around the city in glorified pajama’s and fighting crime, stopping cars with his bare fucking hands, and I—god, do you even understand what you did? _I trusted you,_ Steve. Even after you ran, even after you chose Barnes over the law, I _still_ trusted you. When we went to Germany to stop you guys, I thought it would be safe, I thought—I was _so fucking sure_ that it would be okay to bring Peter, to give him a chance to test out a better suit that would keep him safe, to give him some good practice. I told him to stay back, web you guys up and keep a good distance, just in case it got a little out of hand, and you know what happened? You dropped part of a fucking airport on him! You fucking—Christ, Rogers, you broke the poor kids nose! He had a concussion and—and a broken nose and he was laying on the ground and he didn’t fucking _move_ and for a minute, I thought he was a goner, I thought—fuck, I don’t _know_ what I thought, but I couldn’t breathe, alright? I barely knew the kid, and I thought I got him killed because I was stupid enough to trust you! And then the poor kid had to watch from the sidelines as Rhodey damn near plummeted to his death, and you know what Peter said to me after that? He _apologized_, Steve. He apologized because he thought he could have done something to save Rhodey from hitting the ground, and all I could think was that he was so much like what I thought you were. So you can keep saying you’re sorry, but I don’t give a shit if you’re sorry! I can’t—how the hell am I supposed to trust you? After all of that, how the hell do you expect me to ever trust you again?”

Steve is stunned speechless for a long, tense moment, Tony’s words sinking into him, burning him painfully as he processes them slowly. “I didn’t…” he trails off, hands shaking and breaths catching in his throat. “I didn’t—Tony, I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I’ll never be able to explain how sorry I am.”

_“I don’t care,”_ Tony hisses, and his hands are shaking, too, but with pure, blood boiling anger. “Don’t you get it, Steve? I don’t care. I stopped caring the second you rammed that fucking shield into my chest. I stopped caring when I had to build braces for Rhodey so that he could fucking walk again. I stopped caring years ago. Give me _one good fucking reason_ why I should care now.”

“Because I’ll do whatever I have to do to prove myself to you,” Steve tells him, practically pleading, trying not to crumble under the weight pressing against his chest. “Sorry isn’t enough, I get that, but I’ll do whatever I have to. I’ll—I’ll leave you alone, leave the kids alone, leave everyone alone and stay on my floor for however long you want me to. I’ll leave, if you want me to. Whatever it takes.”

Tony levels Steve with a glare. “Whatever it takes isn’t enough.” Then, before Steve can say anything else: “Get out of my lab.”

“But I—Tony, please—”

“You said you’d leave if I want you to, right?” Tony points at the doors. “Get the fuck out of my lab before I throw your ass out. Don’t talk to me, don’t take to the kids, don’t talk to anyone in my family unless they talk to you first. If it makes you feel better, which is already more than you fucking deserve, I’ll talk to Pepper, I’ll think about what you said, and see if I think of anything, but until I come to you, I don’t want to even fucking look at you. Got it?”

Steve has to swallow what he thinks must be his heart, lodged in his throat. “Yeah. Got it.”

And then, without looking back, he leaves.

Tony is still shaking an hour later, trying to connect the wires in the open chest plate of his suit, and he doesn’t really realize it until a pair of small hands ender his vision and settle over his. A bit stunned, he looks up, sees that it’s Miles standing next to him, giving him a bright little twelve year old grin while Peter and Harley watch from a few feet away, both of them clearly concerned as they look at Tony.

“What’s—” Tony stops, clears his throat when his voice cracks, then forces a smile. “What’s up, kid?”

“They said I should help you,” Miles tells him, a bit timid and wide eyed in the same way he has been ever since he entered the lab for the first time, though it’s not nearly as bad as before, that antsy hero worshipping energy that made him bounce on his feet and look around wildly. “It’s, um—Harley said it’s, like, a right of passage to working in the lab, or something?”

Confused, Tony looks at Harley, who shrugs with a smile. “What is?”

Peter’s the one that speaks up, adjusting the glasses slipping down the slope of his nose and speaking matter of factly as he says, “Keeping you from hurting yourself when you work while you’re upset.”

The bafflement must be clear on Tony’s face, because Harley had to duck his head and muffle his snickering against Peter’s shoulder, while Peter gives him a smug sort of smile and Miles shuffles his feet sheepishly, like he thinks he’s done something wrong. Tony shakes his head, confused. “What?”

“It’s true,” Peter says, brows lifting as he gives Tony a look. “You almost set the whole lab on fire when you were trying to fix my suit while mad at me for going after the Rhino. If I didn’t help, you would’ve been sent to the Med Bay for some serious burns or some shit. And I was here when Harley stepped in after you and Pepper had that fight about you not going to enough meetings and you almost lost a finger ‘cause you weren’t paying attention. It’s, like, a tradition that comes with working in the lab with you.”

Tony parts his lips to defend himself, but stops when he can’t think of anything. Instead, he pulls his hands back and glowers while Miles happily goes to connect the wires that Tony’s trembling fingers had been struggling so badly with, grumbling out, “I’m not upset.”

Harley snorts. “That was the least believable thing you’ve ever said.”

“Don’t sass me, Keener. I’ll ship you back to Tennessee, I swear to god.”

“No you won’t,” Harley states, sounding sure of himself. “What did the dickhead have to say?”

Groaning, Tony leans his elbows on the edge of the worktable he’s sitting at and buries his face in his hands, having forgotten that the kids had been in the room when Friday alerted him that Steve was asking to speak to him. It’s not like he’s planning to keep what was talked about from them—they’re nosy little shits, he knows, and if he doesn’t tell them, then they’ll just hack into Friday and watch the footage themselves—but he had been hoping to think it over for a day or two before talking about it. Specifically, he wanted to have some time to consider how to handle the whole Steve knowing that Peter is Spider-Man thing, because that’s not his identity on the line, and the question of what to do about it is not one that he can answer. However, with Peter and Harley looking at him expectantly (while Harley is still leaning his head on Peter’s shoulder, because they’re gross and adorable like that) and Miles glancing up from the suit with silent curiosity in his eyes, Tony knows he needs to fess up now, so he just lets out a long, strained sigh, shoulders slumping a bit, and says, “He found out that Pete is Spider-Man.”

When he looks up a moment later to clock their reactions, he sees that Peter has gone pale as a sheet, Harley sitting ramrod straight next to him with an angry sort of protectiveness written in the furrow of his brows, and Miles just looks nervous, quietly asking, “How did he find out?”

“He connected the dots,” Tony says, rolling his eyes as he uses Steve’s choice of wording. “I guess Sam mentioned the fact that Peter’s from Queens at some point, and Steve remembers Spidey telling him he’s from Queens in Germany, and when he saw the Spidey suit in here, he just… he just figured it out.”

“That easily?” Peter asks, voice a bit shaky. “He really figured it out that easily? Just like that?” Tony wants to say something reassuring, but Peter’s got that far away sort of look in his eyes that says he isn’t really listening, won’t process any sort of comforting words, so Tony just nods once, the action tense and curt and still so fucking angry at Steve, at everything he said. Peter laughs a bit, a kind of humorless, hollow sound, and then lets out a sort of hiccup and says, “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

The speed in which Harley gets to his feet and grabs an empty bucket from beneath the workbench is almost impressive, but Tony’s chest aches when he sees the look on Harley’s face, the anger and the worry and the pain as he rubs Peter’s back and huddles close to him, murmurs quiet words that Tony can’t hear, until Peter pulls his head back from the bucket and wipes his mouth with the back of his shaking hand. Dum-E takes the bucket from him, scurries off to the bathroom connected to the lab to clean it out, and Tony barely catches it when Harley softly asks, “You want me to go kick his ass? ‘Cause I will.”

Peter laughs again, but it’s a more genuine sound this time as he leans into Harley, shakes his head a bit and looks at Tony with slightly red eyes. Voice a bit hoarse, he asks, “What did he say, exactly?”

Tony gets to his feet, walks over to them to settle a hand on Peter’s shoulder, letting out a slow sigh before telling him, “He said that he won’t tell anyone, and he won’t pry or anything like that.”

“And you believe him?” Harley asks, distrust clear on his features.

Shrugging, Tony admits, “I think so, yeah. Not because I trust him, but because it looks like he really is trying to apologize, and I don’t think he’s stupid enough to do something to piss me off. But whether I believe him or not doesn’t matter, because it’s not about me. This is your identity, kid—” he looks down at Peter, who has his brows furrowed in thought. “How we handle this is up to you.”

“I vote on kicking his ass,” Harley offers, raising the hand that isn’t still tracing patterns against Peter’s back absentmindedly in the air, a cheeky yet genuine sort of glimmer in his eyes.

Miles trots over to them, hand raised. “I second that.”

Harley coos, reaching over to pinch his cheek. “You’re so adorable, thinking you can fight Captain America. Pete, do you see this? Do you see him? Isn’t he adorable?”

“You wouldn’t be able to fight him, either,” Peter snorts, rolling his eyes while Miles swats away Harley’s hand with an indignant little huff, though he’s sporting a little smile, too, already growing used to how often they call him small and cute, really taking this adoptive dad’s joke to the extreme.

“But you can,” Tony points out. Peter looks at him sharply, a bit caught off guard, and Tony raises his hands in the air in surrender. “I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t, I’m just saying that you could.” Then, after a moment, he adds, “Don’t tell May that I said that. I’m not supposed to encourage fighting, apparently, even though I personally believe you have every right to kick some ass every now and then.”

“I’m not fighting Flash,” Peter states when Harley gives him a look.

Harley groans, face scrunching up with some kind of pout. “He totally deserves it, though!”

Peter rolls his eyes again. “No, he doesn’t, and you know it. But…” he looks back to Tony, some sort of consideration filtering through his eyes as he falters. “It’s up to me, right? What to do about this?”

“One hundred percent,” Tony nods. “I mean, maybe warn May and Pep first, just so they’re not left out of the loop, and maybe tell Angie, too, ‘cause she’ll be pissed if she finds out we kept her out of the loop, but it’s your identity, your decision, and we’ll support it no matter what.”

A smile tugs at Peter’s lips, something mischievous and wicked and amused. “I know what I wanna do.”

Nat takes one look at him before frowning. “Didn’t go well, I’m guessing?”

Steve shakes his head, feeling crestfallen and pained and like there’s something heavy pressing against his rib cage. “Not at all,” he murmurs. “I wasn't even able to say everything I wanted to before he blew up at me. He said he’ll think about what I said, but until he comes to me, if he ever does, then he doesn’t even want to _see_ me. I… I really destroyed us, Nat. More than I thought.”

“You tried,” she tells him, sets a hand on his shoulder with a sympathetic little smile. “We both messed up with him, beyond belief, but you’re trying to talk to him. It’s his choice whether he ever forgives us or not, but you’re making a move, you’re doing something. After what we’ve done, that’s all we can really do right now. Just keep trying to prove to him that we mean it when we say we want to fix it.”

“But there might not be any fixing it,” Steve points out. “He really trusted us, Nat, more than I thought he did, and we took advantage of that. We might not be able to fix this. What do we do then?”

For a moment, Natasha doesn’t respond, thinks it through and ponders her respond. Then, with some kind of half shrug, she tells him, “We just keep going, then. Whether or not he ever trusts us again, we’re still here, and we have to do the best with what he have. Follow the rules, don’t step out of line. Eventually, when we’re done with house arrest and the team is back together, we’ll show we trust him, and maybe he’ll start to trust us again, too, even if it’s just when we’re on missions. That’s the best we can do.”

Steve sighs, nodding his head in agreement. “I just wish we could do more.”

“I do, too,” Nat admits. “And maybe we can, eventually. But, for now…”

“For now,” Steve says. “For now, we do what we can.”

_And we hope that it’s enough,_ he thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t have to, knowing that she’s thinking it, too, a desperate wish that they fear will never come true.

Tony enters the Rogue’s gym while Nat is wrapping her hands, preparing to take a few rounds with one of Steve’s punching bags, an antsy energy tingling beneath her skin that she needs to channel into something that will bruise. She hears the door open, turns with the assumption that it’s Sam, who said he was going to join her for training in a little bit, and she freezes when she sees him, standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, eyeing her warily. Then, because she’s been trained from childhood to act neutral, she forces herself to not tense up, to remain cool and collected as she simply says, “Stark.”

“Romanov,” Tony greets, nodding his head a bit, jaw set. “I have a question for you.”

His voice is clipped and to the point. She hums. “Just one?”

“No point in asking more,” Tony says breezily. “I’ll be surprised if you answer this one truthfully.”

Natasha flinches a bit, but doesn’t argue, knowing that he has every right to assume her dishonesty. She had quite the habit of hiding the truth from him, evading giving him answers to most of the questions he asked. Deciding that promising her honesty isn’t worth it, knowing he won’t believe her anyway, so she just bows her head in some sort of nod and tells him, “Ask away, then.”

He doesn’t, not for a long, long moment, still staring at her, as if expecting her to attack him at any second. She tries not to feel hurt by that as he slowly asks, “Why did you do it?”

Confused, she cocks her head to the side slightly, frowning. “Why did I do what?”

“Switch sides,” he elaborates. “You let them go even though you agreed with the accords. Why?”

“They weren’t going to stop,” she tells him instantly, simply. “If we brought them in, they would have just found a way to escape again, and it would have kept going. Steve said there were more people like Bucky out there, and I knew he wouldn’t go in without a fight, and I was tired of fighting.”

He keeps staring at her, a bit blank and expressionless. “I was tired of fighting, too,” he tells her, deadpan yet somehow saddened, too. “I wouldn’t have turned my back on you, but I guess that’s where we differ.”

Natasha wets her lips and tries to subtly swallow the ball of emotion in her throat. “I never meant to turn my back on you,” she says. “I was trying to find a way to be on both sides.”

“And I was trying to find a way to prevent there from having to be different sides in the first place,” he states, jaw clenching. She isn’t sure what answer he was hoping for, but she doesn’t think he’s found it as he shakes his head and turns on his heel, leaving the room before she can say anything else, though she isn’t sure what it is that she could say, and she’s forced to watch him leave with something harsh and painful settling in the pit of her stomach and making her feel sick.

“I’m sorry,” she tells the closed door, wishing she had the courage that Steve has, wishes she could just make herself say it to Tony’s face. She stays frozen in that spot, staring at where Tony had been, until Sam comes in and breaks her out of her little trance.

When she hits the punching bag, she doesn’t care that she splinters her knuckles open under the force of each punch thrown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is the training >:)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for some reason, this took, like, fifty years to figure out how to start, because i didn't want to start it with the scene with peter and steve, but then i just gave up on being picky and finally managed to write this chapter in like less than ten hours. hope u like it!! i actually really love how it turned out so!!!
> 
> also chapter is currently unedited and has a bunch of dumb typos but i’ll go back and fix them in the morning lmao

5\. the training

Steve barely manages to block the punch aimed for his jaw, ducks his head with wide eyes and a huff of air and a slightly breathless, “Okay, I get it, you’re mad—”

“Shut up,” Peter grits out, flexes his wrists and lets the fury flow through his veins, filling him with enough adrenaline for him not to notice the achy soreness burning through his still healing body. though he knows he’s going to regret not easing into training like he knows he should have. Besides, this isn’t really meant to be training—he still has a majority of his strength, now that he’s a good seventy, maybe seventy five percent healed, so all he really needs is to do some daily stretching and light working out until the soreness goes away and still pretty regular puking doesn’t keep happening. This is more of an excuse to punch Steve Rogers in his stupid face and not have to face any consequences for it.

With a heavy sigh, Steve blocks another hit, spins away from an admittedly sloppy kick towards his side, but missed the chance to stop the next throw that manages to land on his left cheekbone, snapping his head to the side with a small grunt of pain. His jaw clenches, and it’s clear he regrets agreeing to this, but he had promised to do whatever Tony asks of him to prove that he’s being genuine in his apologies, and he’s going to stick to that promise. Even if that means allowing a seventeen year old enhanced teenager hit him under the ruse of building up his strength again. Still, he rubs at his cheekbone a bit, looks at Peter with a sort of sad kind of weight settled on his shoulders, and tries again. “Peter, we can talk about this.”

Peter’s eyes narrow into a glare behind the slightly fogged up glasses that he wishes he could take off but can’t quite yet. “Fine,” he sneers. “I’ll talk. This—” he throws another punch, summons even more strength than what he’s been using to land a heavy blow in the center of Steve’s chest, making him take a stunned step back and involuntarily release all the air in his lungs, “—is for how you treated Mr. Stark.”

“I regret the way I—”

“Did I say I was done?” Peter glares harder, and he knows, in most cases, he’s not that intimidating, with the little bit of natural roundness on his face that can look like baby fat, the Bambi eyes and the fact that he’s significantly shorter than Steve, but there’s enough anger within him that he could probably power the entire Tower with it if he became it’s sole energy source. Steve rubs at his chest, presses his lips together, and waits for Peter to go on. On a normal day, with almost any other person, the guilt and the regret shining in Steve’s eyes would be enough to make Peter falter and consider giving him another chance, but Steve Rogers burned through all his chances a long fucking time ago.

If he wants another one, he has to earn it.

Peter grinds his teeth together, sends a carefully aimed kick to Steve’s ribs, which is only weakly blocked by Steve holding up his forearm to take a majority of the impact. “That’s for Germany.” Another punch, once again barely blocked, as if Steve knows there’s not much point in trying to stop this. “That’s for blaming Mr. Stark for Ultron.” Another. “For never even fucking reading the Accords.” Another, with even more strength. “For never listening to him.” There’s a crack that fills the air before blood gushes from Steve’s most definitely broken nose. “For leaving him to _die_ in _Siberia!”_

Steve grabs his nose, winces at the flare of pain. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re _sorry?!”_ Peter repeats, louder than intended, now yelling, spit flying from his mouth as he speaks. “I’m sorry, too! You know what I’m sorry for? My parents never coming home, and—and my uncle being _shot_ and bleeding out right in front of me, and not being able to save an eleven year old girl who looked at me like I was her only hope before the people who took her put a fucking bullet in her head! I’m sorry for forcing Aunt May to be a mom, for—for never telling Harry that he was my first friend, and for—f-for doing _nothing_ for _months_ when Skip _ruined_ me, and—”

“Peter,” Steve cuts in, his eyes now wider than before, features slack with shock and sadness.

Peter shakes his head, swings an arm back and socks Steve in the jaw to shut him up. “You don’t get to say sorry, alright?! Saying sorry isn’t enough! I—I work my ass off every fucking day to prove that I’m sorry! I try to—try to be the perfect son so May doesn’t have to worry, and I do everything I can to avoid getting hurt because I know Tony blames himself when I do, and I don’t get mad when Flash pushes me or calls me names ‘cause I remember us getting along at the start of freshman year and I know he’s not actually a bad person, and—and what the hell have you done to prove you’re sorry, huh? Other than, I don’t know, criticizing me and Harley’s relationship, insulting the way that May and Tony and Pepper and Angie act as parents, being a nosy piece of shit and finding out I’m Spider-Man, going to Tony’s lab and bringing up bad memories that made it so his hands didn’t stop shaking for _three hours?_”

When Peter punches Steve again, there’s no attempt to block it. Just a sorrowful acceptance.

“That’s for me,” Peter spits, tears in his eyes. “That’s not for Tony, or Pepper, or anyone else who deserves a chance to give you a piece of their mind. It’s for me, because I—_I looked up to you._ My parents would tuck me in and tell me Captain America bedtime stories, and—and I always preferred Tony, always liked Iron Man the most, but you—you were a hero to me. This—” and it’s the final throw, one that’s sure to leave a black eye, “—is for the me that was _stupid_ _enough _to wanna be like _you.”_

With that, Peter wipes at the snot and the tears on his face using the back of his hand, and marches out of the room with his shoulders squared and his head held high. He only has to hold the look until the door swings shut and he’s standing on the other side, Harley waiting for him—just Harley, because Tony has a meeting and Peter insisted that he didn’t need to be here for this, though he’s almost certain that Tony was still monitoring the entire situation through Friday, probably silently cheering Peter on.

Harley’s eyes are shiny with unshed tears and he looks a little bit heartbroken but he still opens his arms and catches him when Peter sags into the embrace, the two of them clutching onto each other and not bothering with words, just letting a heavy, yet somehow comfortable, silence settle over them instead.

For what it’s worth, Peter feels a little bit bad about it the next day.

He doesn’t regret it, really, because everything he said was true, and he knows that Steve is probably only sporting a few barely there bruises thanks to the fact that he also has enhanced healing. It was well deserved, if he takes a step back to think about it logically, but that doesn’t mean that there’s isn’t a little tinge of guilt at the base of his spine. He doesn’t like being violent. He really, really doesn’t.

“Then I’ll kick his ass next time,” Harley offers, his head in Peter’s lap as he flashes a toothy grin. “I can’t punch as hard as you, but maybe it’ll still wound his ego, or something.”

Peter snorts. “Harley, I adore you, but you kind of suck at fighting. There’s a reason Tony wants you to be trained in self-defense. Your stance is all wrong and you’d probably break your thumb.”

Harley scrunches his nose in offense. “My fighting was good enough in Rose Hill.”

“Rose Hill doesn’t have superheroes,” Peter points out. “New York is infested with enhanced people. And that’s not even the point, okay? Spider-Man is friendly. He avoids hurting anyone at all cost, and I—”

“You acted as Peter Parker,” Harley cuts in. “Peter Parker is hurt and upset and has every right to do what you did. Spider-Man is part of you, sure, but your Spidey morals and your Peter morals can be a little bit different sometimes. You know Captain Fuckhead will heal and you got some shit off your chest. In my book, that’s a clean cut win-win scenario. No need to feel guilty about it.”

Not looking at all convinced, Peter lets out a rough, tense sigh, shaking his head. “Look, I don’t—I don’t feel guilty, not really, but I saw the second he really understood what I was saying. I saw how sad he was, and I—I don’t trust him, I don’t _like_ him, not even a little bit, but I—I can tell that he’s really trying.”

Instantly, Harley sits up, scooches over until he’s planted on Peter’s lap, legs bracketing him against the sofa, and cups his face in his hands. “No,” he states, voice firm and sure. “I know you, Parker. I know you’ve got a heart bigger than Manhattan, and I know you’re going to give him another chance when he’s earned it, but _he hasn’t earned it yet,_ okay? He needs to work for it, and, honestly, until Tony is ready to let him in again, I say we just give him the cold shoulder. For our own sake, if that makes sense…?”

“He’s _trying,”_ Peter stresses again.

Harley shakes his head. “Then he can keep trying until he’s actually proven himself.”

It looks like Peter is close to tears when he says, “No, you don’t—_I’m_ trying, okay? I’m trying all the time and—and doesn’t trying count for something? It has to count for something, right?”

“Honey, I need you to listen to me, okay?” Harley asks, taking on a more gentle tone now that he sees the line Peter has drawn between himself and Steve Rogers. “These two things—you and him—you’re completely different, alright? And I know you know that, because you said it yourself while you were kicking his ass yesterday. You’re trying to amend things that aren’t even your fault, Pete. He’s only just now trying to apologize for years of shit that he never realized was wrong until now. It’s different. _You’re _different, you hear me? Don’t compare yourself to him because you’re a million times better than him.”

Peter lifts a hand to scrub against his eyes, attempting to blink away that shine over his eyes. He looks at Harley with some kind of strained hope on his features. “You’re not lying for my sake, right?”

Harley snorts. “I have literally never lied to you and I’m not going to start now, sweetheart.”

“Okay,” Peter murmurs, relaxing back into the sofa cushions a bit, lightly encircling his arms round Harley’s waist to pull him closer, kind of half hugging him for a moment before tilting up his head to offer his boyfriend a smile. “Thanks, Harls.”

With his hands cupping Peter’s face, Harley simply hums a bit and pulls him in, places a soft peck of a kiss on his lips, the sweet gesture being drawn out when Peter kisses him fully. Harley huffs out a laugh but doesn’t try to pull away, clearly content to let the moment last a little longer, still settled cozily on Peter’s lap, kind of leaning into him as they continue to lazily make out for a few minutes.

They don’t pull away until they hear the sound of the elevator doors sliding open, followed shortly by a disgruntled scoff and Tony exclaiming, “Really? On my new couch? Can’t you be gross hormonal teenagers in the privacy of your own damn rooms, where I don’t have to walk in on it?”

Harley rolls his eyes, props his chin on the top of Peter’s curls while Peter muffles his slightly embarrassed snickering in the material of Harley’s shirt. “Whatever, old man,” he snarks, waits until Peter stops giggling to move one of his legs up and over, so he’s still sitting in Peter’s lap but is no longer straddling him. Tony crinkles his nose at them, though he’s shaking his head with a twitch of a smile on his lips. However, it’s impossible to miss the bags under his eyes and the way he seems to be more stiff muscles and tensed up than usual. Harley frowns. “You good?”

“Hm?” Tony wanders over to the loveseat by the sofa, falls into it with a heavy sigh. “Oh, uh—yeah, I’m good. Just trying to mentally prepare myself for Steve’s war buddy flying over in… Christ. Two days? Jesus.” He rubs at his eyes with a clenched fist, like some kind of overgrown toddler, and melts back into the loveseat with a grimace. “Whatever. It’s not like I blame Barnes. It’ll just be weird, seeing him.”

“Just ‘cause it isn’t his fault doesn’t mean you have to be okay with him being here,” Peter offers.

Tony falters, considers. “I suppose. But, I’m not against having him here, is the thing. It’s just the seeing him and remembering what I saw him do, even if what he did wasn’t really him.”

“Also, Steve,” Harley says.

With another heavy sigh, Tony nods. “Yeah. And Steve.” He seems to brighten a bit at that, though, a larger, more genuine smiling lighting up his features as he leans over to pat Peter on the knee. “I saw the footage, by the way. Our little spider gave Cap a real good ass kicking, huh?”

Peter shrugs, but he’s smiling a bit, too. “Yeah, I guess. I think I broke his nose.”

“Shouldn’t done worse, in my opinion,” Harley muses. “But it was pretty badass. Dunno if you listened to the audio, too, but Peter tore him a new one. Really knocked his ass down a few pegs, I think.”

Tony’s brows quirk, intrigued. “Really? What’d you say?”

Another shrug from Peter, but Harley butts in quickly and says, “To summarize, he basically told Steve that he isn’t allowed to say sorry ‘cause he hasn’t done shit to prove he means it. And then gave him a black eye and said it was for the fact that Peter used to look up to him.”

“Wow,” Tony whistles. “I might have to rewatch the footage with the sound on, then.”

“I feel like encouraging violence goes against, like, all the rules,” Peter says.

Tony waves a hand, not bothered. “I never follow the rules, kid. You should know that by now.”

“Yeah, but, like, this could be impressionable. This could be my villain origin story.”

“Babe, you can’t be a villain,” Harley says, honest to god pouting at Peter like an upset child. “Then _I’d _have to become a villain and my Ma would end up flying to New York just to kick my ass for it.”

Peter’s face screws up, clearly disgruntled. “Villains don’t let parents stop them, Harley. Suck it up.”

Harley looks at him incredulously. “The fuck, Parker?”

From the loveseat, Tony snorts, smothers it in the palm of his hand as he looks at the two of them in clear, shiny eyed amusement. “You two should star in a sitcom,” he says. “You bicker like a married couple.”

“Like you and Pepper?” Peter asks, grinning. “Or like you and Rhodey?”

Tony frowns at him. “First of all, Rhodey and I were only married for, like, a little bit over a year, back in the nineties. Second of all, Pepper and I aren’t even married yet. We’re just engaged.”

“And taking ten years to plan the wedding, apparently,” Peter says, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, when is that happening, by the way?” Harley interjects, genuinely curious. “I haven’t heard a word of wedding planning since I got here, and you’ve been engaged for, what? Two years?”

Tony’s frown deepens. “A year and a half,” he corrects with a huff. “And we have been planning it, thank you very much. We just didn’t want to hire a wedding planner and arrange it all ourselves, which is taking longer because we kind of run a multi-billion dollar company together and manage a team a superheroes, including that little shit—” he juts his chin out at Peter, who looks offended at the gesture, “—that keeps giving me grey hairs and always seems to get stabbed when I’m trying to pick flower arrangements.”

Harley purses his lips in thought, leans closer into Peter before offering, “We could probably help out, if you want. Probably not, like, a whole bunch, but with second opinions and stuff, y’know? It’s summer and we’re pretty much doing nothing all day every day, so looking through some stuff or making calls for things when you and Pep are busy would at least give us somethin’ to do.”

Instantly, Peter is nodding, eyes wide with excitement. “Oh my god, yes! And May would love to help out, too! She loves weddings and Pepper trusts her opinion on things and since she’s still just training with Helen, she’s always in the tower, too, and has plenty of time on her hands!”

“Boys,” Tony starts, touched yet wary. “I don’t know if—”

“C’mon, Mister Stark!” Peter whines, jutting out his lower lip and widening his eyes even more, properly begging now. “We obviously won’t make any official decisions without getting approval from you and Miss Potts, but we can make the calls, like Harley said, or just look at different choices and pick out, like, the top five, so that you two don’t have so much to choose from anymore! We can help! And, I mean, Harley’s right—we’re doing pretty much nothing most of the time, unless Miles comes over for lab time, and even then, there’s not a whole lot to work on other than minor upgrades and maybe the odd idea here and there. I’m sure Miles would even love to help out, too! He’s like a puppy!”

Tony squints at them, presses his lips together to hide the smile threatening to break through. His sour mood has been forgotten entirely, replaced by a warm fondness in his chest. “I’ll talk to Pep about it.”

Peter pumps a fist in the air, grinning from ear to ear. “Yes! Oh my god, I need to start a Pinterest board!”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was dating a middle aged white mom living in the suburbs,” Harley says. Peter glares at him and, without a word, shoves him off his lap and onto the floor. Harley lands with a thud, looks up at Peter with a hurt expression, and, raw betrayal in his tone, says, “Dude, my _ass.”_

“You were being rude,” Peter huffs, arms crossing over his chest. “My Pinterest boards are _great.”_

Harley crinkles his nose and appears physically pained as he slowly says, “They’re not… the _worst...”_

“And for that, I’m not sharing the rest of my ice cream with you.”

“Wait, babe, no, I—I love your Pinterest boards!” Harley exclaims, scrambling off the floor and perching himself back on Peter’s lap with wide, pleading eyes, hands clasped in front of him like a prayer. “The one with all those, um—okay, no, I was gonna say the one with the birds, but that one freaks me out ‘cause birds make me nervous, but, like, the—the color coordinated one, that one’s super cool and—and satisfying to look at! And the pride one is really cute! And the—the one you made for me? I look at it all the time, to see if you’ve added more and to just see what’s on there again ‘cause it’s really cute and nice and—and—and please let me have some of your ice cream, it’s my favorite kind and I will actually cry.”

Peter frowns at him, arms crossed over his chest, chin stuck up stubbornly. It doesn’t take long before his façade cracks, though, a smile peaking through, shoulders losing tension. “Fine. But only a little bit.”

The genuine joy that lights up Harley’s face is absolutely adorable to witness, making Peter grin without really meaning to. Tony sighs, shaking his head. “Seriously, you two are disgusting. It’s illegal.”

“Do you want some of my ice cream, too, Mister Stark?” Peter asks, still grinning while looping his arms around Harley’s waist, just ‘cause he wants to sort of hug him, basks in the warmth.

Tony frowns at them, then sighs again, this time more exasperated than anything else, before shrugging a bit and admitting, “Yeah, kinda. Is it the cookie dough one that you always make me order in bulk?”

Peter’s grin widens. “Yes. Also, you might want to order more. There’s only one left.”

“Jesus, already? I just had, like, thirty of them delivered two weeks ago!”

“I’m a growing spider boy that requires a lot to eat,” Peter tells him. “Please order more. I’m addicted.”

The severity in which Tony rolls his eyes is honestly impressive. “You’re lucky I love you, kid.” He pushes himself to his feet, head towards the kitchen, and says, “Fri, you heard him. Order more.”

“Right away, Boss,” Friday responds.

Peter snickers, calling out, “Thanks, Mister Stark!”

From the kitchen, Tony replies, “Don’t thank me yet! I’m stealing the last of this!”

“Hey, no, wait a fucking second—”

Before either Peter or Harley can reach the kitchen to stop him, Tony has already scurried into the elevator with the last of the ice cream cradled against his chest, clutching a spoon in his hand and letting out a cackle at the looks of betrayal that he barely manages to see before the doors slide shut.

Bucky Barnes steps off the jet with a timid sort of aura to him two days later, eyes sweeping across the roof of Stark Tower warily, taking in the group of people standing ten feet away. Behind him, T’Challa steps out as well, settles a hand on his shoulder that helps ease him a bit, having spent the last year out of cryo with the Wakandan royal family, trusts them and feels relaxed with them now. Unfortunately, Shuri was busy, unable to accompany them on this flight, but T’Challa cleared his schedule to make sure Bucky is welcomed nicely and is able to settle in with no issues. After all, Bucky isn’t like the Rogues—they were able to support his case when working to pardon the others, made it clear that he hadn’t been informed of the situation at hand, was only acting on instinct and PTSD from trying to escape all the various people, governments, and organizations that kept trying to take him in for crimes committed as the Winter Soldier. Crimes that have been excused, after providing evidence of the brain washing.

To put it simply, Bucky is here as a free man, no house arrest, no requirements to stay in Stark Tower or be watched closely by the UN until he regains trust he never had. He’s gone through the therapy, the appointments, the assessments, the treatments—all provided and recorded by Wakanda, until the UN decided that Bucky is fit to be returned into society, no longer weighed down by his past.

He could go anywhere. Do anything. Be anyone—because he doesn’t really know who he is anymore.

But he wants to be here, if only to rely on Steve for some sense of familiarity, though the appeal of earning a spot with the Avengers, of being able to help people after so many years of hurting them…

Well, he’s nervous, but he’s going to tough it out and get through it. It’s what he needs to do.

As soon as he steps foot on the roof, Steve is there, enveloping his friend in a hug, some kind of relieved sigh pushing past his lips as he embraces him firmly. “Missed you, Buck,” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, through a lump in his throat that he can’t really explain. There’s a mostly healed bruise around Steve’s eye and connecting to another bruise on his nose. Bucky doesn’t bring either up, even as the curiosity sort of tugs at him, files it away for later. “Missed you, too.”

Sam greets him next, puts a hand on his shoulder with a wide grin, then shoves him with an eye roll and a good natured joke, something that makes Bucky laugh under his breath. Nat nods at him, friendly but silent, and Wanda grins and waves, though doesn’t really approach him, the two not really close. Clint and Scott are no where to be seen, but Bucky was expecting that, knows that the two had turned themselves in and serves a year of house arrest before returning to their normal lives with their families. He hopes to see them soon—he doesn’t really know either of them super well, had limited time for conversation during the mess they faced, but they both seem like pleasant people and obviously have respectable morals, choosing their families over being on the run.

Tony steps up next, and flanking him are a little herd of people that look both warm and welcome but also wary as Tony sticks a hand out to him—there are two teens, with their pinkies linked between them, and a younger kid, too standing a little bit behind them and clutching onto the material of the shorter teen’s shirt with wide eyes. There’s Pepper Potts, too, who Bucky recognizes from his time properly catching up with the world in Wakanda, hours upon days upon weeks upon months of research and binging all the shows and movies and things he doesn’t know. Shuri definitely helped him in that case, gave him lists of things to look up and a high tech laptop that she specifically made for him to look it all up on. He also recognizes James Rhodes, both from his research and from the fight at the airport, and there’s a gruff man in a suit standing guard behind Tony but in front of all of others, hands clasped, professional. A body guard of sorts, Bucky assumes. The others—the teens, the kid, and the woman standing behind them, he doesn’t recognize, but none of them seem particularly displeased by his presence, so that’s a win to him.

“Barnes,” Tony greets, kind of tense but not unkind. His hand is still outstretched, and Bucky feels conflicted on if he should shake it or not. Tony keeps it there, a silent offer, while he speaks, telling him, “I just want to be blunt with you, put it out on the table so that there’s no confusion. What happened in Siberia, and what I saw, it—it makes it a bit hard for me to see you, makes me think of—of the video.” Bucky flinches at that, guilt settling in his gut like a ball of lead. Tony goes on. “But, despite that, I want you to know that I don’t blame you. I know you weren’t in control. It might take some time for me to separate that from the memory of seeing what happened, but I’m working on it. Until then…”

Bucky hesitates, feels T’Challa’s calming presence behind him, then reaches out—with his real hand, not with the prosthetic that Shuri gave him—to shake hands with Tony, a bit stiff and awkward but harboring no anger. “Until then,” Bucky repeats, quietly. “For what it’s worth, I… I’m real sorry, Stark.”

A little smile pulls at Tony’s lips at he releases Bucky’s hand and takes a small step back. “I know,” he says, ducking his head in a grateful sort of nod. “Now, with that out of the way, there’s some introductions in order, and someone can show you to your room and give you a tour. And I have something for you, too. It’s something I made for everyone, a bracelet that has a panic button, in case you’re ever in any kind of trouble and need some help, but that can wait until after you’re settled in.” He waves a dismissive hand through the air, as if creating something like that when Bucky was expecting to be socked in the face for what he did isn’t a monumental event in Bucky’s eyes, and then offers Bucky a slightly larger, less tense smile. “We don’t want to overwhelm you, of course, so you can choose what you wanna do and when. If you wanna skip introductions and just see your room first, that’s up to you.”

“I…” Bucky trails off, shakes his head a bit, already overwhelmed solely by the friendliness being shown to him, the welcoming nature that he never would have expected. The teens are murmuring to each other, looking at him with their wide eyes, appearing almost excited. The kid is practically vibrating with his own excitement, and the others, the adults, Pepper Potts and James Rhodes and the body guard and the woman standing behind the kids, are all smiling at him kindly, and he decides that he’d like to meet these people, wants to know all the names to match to the faces he sees. “Introductions, if… if that’s alright.”

“Of course it’s alright,” Tony says, now grinning as he gestures towards the group. “Let’s start with the kids, since they’re all obviously eager to meet you. Boys, I’m sure you know his name, but this is James Barnes. Barnes, from left to right, this is Harley, Peter, and Miles.” The three of them wave energetically, and whatever wariness there had been before is gone, apparently eased by the fact how the interaction between Tony and Bucky went.

Bucky smiles at them, small and timid was genuine, too. “You can call me Bucky.”

The one on the left—Harley—seems unable to stop himself as he says, “Dude, I love your arm. Like, the prosthetic—I mean, is that rude? Sorry, I’m not tryin’ to be rude, but Tony told me that the Princess of Wakanda made it and Wakanda is so technologically advanced and I’m—I’m kind of a, uh—a sort of engineer to be, and I just really wanna see how she made it, which is—is probably rude to say. Sorry.”

And, without meaning to, Bucky laughs—a real one, still kind of quiet but definitely there. “S’not rude, kid,” he says, smile wider. “I don’t know jack shit about what she did to make this, and she told me about it a hundred times. Maybe you can get me to understand how it works.”

“I like him,” Harley says definitively. “Tony, he’s staying. I’m gonna learn how that arm works if it’s the last fuckin’ thing I do and I’m going to cry tears of joy when I figure it out.”

Tony chuckles, ruffles Harley’s hair a bit and then playfully pushes him away. “Sure, kid.”

“Um, Mister Bucky, sir,” the middle one, Peter, says, looking just as excited but also more shy about it. “I, uh—okay, not sure how to say this, and, like, two people on this roof don’t actually know this yet, but I don’t care, so, um—I’m, um—I’m also Spider-Man, and I was at the—the airport, in Germany? And I just wanna say sorry about webbing you to the ground. I mean, I know you got out just fine, but I felt bad about it and I already said sorry to Sam and he said I don’t have to apologize, but… yeah. Sorry.”

“You’re that spider guy?” Bucky asks, more impressed than anything else. Peter nods, still looking timid, apparently not sensing that Bucky’s tone is all friendly. “You blocked my punch, kid. You did good.”

Peter brightens at that, grins a bit, and ducks his head sheepishly. “I, uh… thanks, Mister Bucky.”

“Just Bucky is fine.”

“Um.” Peter shrugs a bit. “Okay. Thanks, Bucky.”

Miles is still staring at Bucky with wide, excited eyes, but he doesn’t speak up, just tugs at Peter’s sleeve and stands on his tiptoes to whisper something in his ear that makes Peter roll his eyes and snicker. Bucky isn’t sure how old this Miles kid is, but he’s clearly younger, probably not even a teenager yet, so it makes sense for him to be too shy to speak up. Bucky lets it slide with ease.

“Behind the kids,” Tony goes on, pointing to the woman Bucky doesn’t know, “is May Parker. She’s Peter’s aunt and guardian. Her and Peter both have a floor in the tower, and Pepper and I share guardianship with Harley mother, Angie, who lives in Tennessee, so he lives in the tower, too. Miles doesn’t live here, but with how people seem to keep moving in, I wouldn’t be shocked if that changes.”

A quiet little squeak of shock leaves Miles at that, his eyes going even wider as he insistently tugs at Peter’s sleeve again, looking more urgent and shocked. Harley ducks over, murmurs something to him until he calms down. It’s a cute little sight, Bucky things. Like a little, tiny family.

“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Parker,” Bucky greets politely.

May chuckles, shaking her head. “Call me May, hon.”

Bucky nods a bit. “Nice to meet you, May.”

“That,” Tony continues, not pointing to the body guard, “is Happy Hogan. He’s technically head of security, but he’s also family. If you need to go somewhere, he also doubles as a driver, which he secretly likes even though he acts like he hates it, so don’t be afraid to ask him to take you somewhere.” Happy rolls his eyes at that, grunting, but doesn’t argue it. Tony looks smug at that and quickly goes on. “These two are Pepper, my fiance and the CEO of Stark Industries, and Rhodey, my best friend that’s been putting up with be longer than anyone else and honestly deserves an award for it. He was also at the airport, since he’s War Machine, and you might have talked or seen each other before that at some point, but it’s a new page, so I’m just gonna act like you haven’t met before.”

Rhodey nods at him, warm smile on his face. “Barnes.”

“Bucky,” Bucky corrects. “Please.”

Rhodey nods again. “Bucky, then.”

Bucky smiles at him. “Thank you.”

“There are more people, obviously,” Tony goes on. “Harley and Peter’s nerd friends visit pretty often, and Helen Cho is our lead doctor that goes back and forth from here and the compound upstate, but these ones are the more constant ones, so the other introductions can wait.” He turns back to Bucky, and something about his posture seems a lot more loose and relaxed in comparison to when he first stepped forward to greet Bucky. “You have virtually unlimited access to the tower, save for the private floors that you don’t live on, which you’ll just need to ask for permission to enter before going in. We can give you a full tour of the building whenever you want, but we should probably get your bags and show you your room first, and we should definitely introduce you to Friday, too. You know anything about AI’s?”

“Some,” Bucky nods. “The basics. Shuri tried to update me on technology while I was in Wakanda, so there’s a lot of details I don’t know, but most things, I know a little about.”

Tony grins. “Great! So, Friday is my AI. She’s integrated into the building, so if you ever have a question and no one is around, feel free to ask her. She’s also who you ask to enter the places you need permission to enter, and she’ll be able to help you however she can if and when you need it. Now, before I info dump more shit on you, let’s get inside. It’s kind of chilly, and spider kid hibernates when he gets too cold.”

“Wait, seriously?” Miles asks, speaking for the first time as he looks up at Peter. “You _hibernate?”_

Peter just shrugs. “Spider’s can’t thermoregulate. Neither can I. Wasn’t fun finding that one out.”

Bucky huffs out a laugh at the nonchalance of that sentence, steps back to help carry two of his three meek bags—one of clothes, two of the crap that Shuri felt necessary to send him with—while T’Challa grabs the third one, striking up a pleasant conversation with Rhodey as the group sort of trails behind Tony, who leads the way inside with a little bounce in his step and a bright smile on his face, visibly pleased by how things went. Bucky is fairly pleased, as well, no longer as nervous as he was before.

In fact, as Peter and Harley purposefully weave through people to walk by Bucky and start asking about Wakanda, their linked pinkies still dangling between them in such a small yet heartwarming display of affection, their words fast and excited and kind, Bucky thinks that he’s going to really like it here.

Steve and Nat are at the back of the group, silent and mostly unnoticed upon the friendly chatter filling the air. Bucky doesn’t look back, doesn’t seek out the familiar faces, doesn’t feel the way Steve watches him with a solemn sort of expression, still heavy from Peter’s words and aching to fix everything he’s done wrong. Nat sighs, bumps their shoulders together, forces a twisted version of her smile. “Small steps,” she tells him. “We have to earn it, Steve. Small steps.”

“Yeah,” he responds, but he’s not sure he really believes it, dreadfully starts to wonder if they’ll ever be able to earn anything at all. Maybe it’s too late to make things right. Maybe he’ll never do enough.

But he can still try, and that’s what he’s going to do.

Small steps. Whatever it takes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next is the plus one, and the end of this fic! obviously, though, don't worry - this series is far from over. i have so many plans for this bitch. i still want to write a halloween one shot and a christmas two shot, even though halloween is way over and christmas is in five, almost four, days, but like? who cares if it's late? i'm gonna write them anyway and i'll post them whenever the hell i want. halloween and christmas never really end, anyway. fuck time. i'm a fanfic writer i do what i want when i want and you can't stop me.
> 
> also i fuckin love bucky and he's the only one on team cap that doesn't need to earn his redemption (in my opinion) because literally none of what happened was his fault and i just want him to feel SAFE and HAPPY and i LOVE when tony and bucky have a good friendship so GUESS WHAT BITCH they's gonna have a good! fuckin! friendship! after some proper development, of course, and this is only the first step of that development, but!!!!
> 
> if u can't tell i really love this series and am really passionate about it so yee fuckin haw bois the last chapter will be posted before new years and next year is gonna be a hectic one with a lot more one shots and additions and i'm really excited about what i have planned for flash's development and just! y'all i can't wait and i'm just genuinely so hyped that people actually like this series and the people who leave comments on every single chapter y'all make me so giddy (even though i'm so bad at remembering to reply to comments but i read every single one i promise and they make my heart so full) and just!! idk how this turned into me rambling but i legit love y'all and this series has over a hundred bookmarks and idk how to check how many people are subscribed to the series but making a home has over 13k hits and i'm just an actual wreck i love yall i love writing this series and i'm really happy about it :')
> 
> anyways i'll stop now i hope ur all having lovely days and i hope the end of 2019 treats you well and i hope 2020 treats you even better !! see you with the last chapter in like? idk when exactly it'll be posted but like i said it'll be before new years so !! see u then!!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i said i would post this last chapter before the new year, and it is currently 7:10 pm on new years eve where i live - which is in the pacific timezone, so i know a lot of people are already in 2020, but it's still 2019 for me, which means i made my deadline, thank u very much!
> 
> i kind of like how this chapter turned out and i kind of want to rewrite the entire thing but ? oh well

** +1. the decision**

It comes down to this:

His best friend, or the kids that absolutely despise him.

Peter hits one of Steve’s outstretched hands, knuckles against palm. Steve nods. “Good. Better.”

Rolling his eyes, Peter resists the urge to bite out something harsh and sarcastic, May and Pepper having told him that, since he got a lot of anger out in the original training shit, he needs to treat it like actual training now. He has a majority of his strength back, but his body isn’t able to maintain energy like it could before. This is more to help build up his ability to use his strength for longer, without the risk of passing out from exhaustion because his body isn’t accustomed to being used after a week of being bed ridden, followed by the past five weeks of slow, torturous healing. It’s necessary, he knows, and brings him that much closer to finally being back to full health again, to being able to finally put on his Spidey suit and go back out on patrols again, but that doesn’t mean he likes hearing Steve talk.

“Are you feeling tired yet?” Steve asks, all professional and serious and—Peter squints, frowns—a little bit concerned, too. “Your time is getting better, but overworking yourself isn’t safe.”

“Helen said—”

“Helen told me that too much strain can cause damages that your healing may not fix,” Steve states, a furrow to his brow. “I understand that you don’t like me, and I understand that I fully deserve that, but I don’t want you to hurt yourself, Peter. I talked to Helen to come up with the best way to train with you.”

Peter presses his lips together and glowers a bit, wishes, once again, that he could have trained with Sam instead, but Steve and Bucky are the only ones with enough enhanced strength to be able to make actual progress, and Bucky didn’t feel comfortable with it when Peter asked him to do it instead. Which, really, is fair enough—even if it is training, in Bucky’s eyes, it’s a risk of hurting someone again. As much as Peter hates doing this with Steve, he’s already built some kind of trusting friendship with Bucky over the past week and he wouldn’t dare ask Bucky again after he’s already politely declined.

Steve is still looking at him when he repeats, “Are you feeling tired yet?”

“I feel fine,” Peter says, and it isn’t a lie—he can tell that he only has maybe ten minutes left in him before he’ll start to feel weaker, but he’s good for now. “I can keep going.”

It looks like Steve isn’t sure if he believes Peter or not, but he simply nods and holds up his hands again, palms out and body braced for the impact of Peter’s punches. “Five more minutes,” he states, eyes flickering over to a digital clock installed into the wall across from them to check the time. “Go.”

Instantly, Peter starts throwing punches again, reminding himself—a bit bitterly, to be honest—the tips that Steve gave him on how to hold himself, all the little things that will only serve to improve Peter’s ability to fight and prevent him being hit as much in the future. A few hits are hard enough to make Steve have to brace a foot behind him to prevent being pushed back, and Peter doesn’t want the guys approval, but he feels some kind of satisfaction at the genuine approval on Steve’s features as he assesses the progress Peter has been making, the _good job_’s and the _nice one_’s that he murmurs. Truth be told, no matter how much Peter dislikes Steve, a childish part of him is giddy at the aspect of making Captain America impressed, and that part won’t fully go away no matter how much Peter tries to smother it.

The minutes tick by briskly, and Peter is honestly feeling a little pumped about the fact that they’ve been training for an hour and a half straight and he feels like he could keep going for a while without needing a break, but Steve says, “Stop,” at the five minute mark and lowers his hands with a nod. “I don’t know what your strength or stamina is like at full health, but you’re already much better than you were last week. If Cho’s calculations are right, I’d say you should be good with strength in a few days, and then we can start working on defensive training instead of focusing solely on offensive.”

Peter gets a little excited at that, then snuffs that excitement with a sniff and a shrug and a half assed, “Sure, whatever,” as he spins on his heel and marches over to where his water bottle is sitting on a bench build into the wall, below the clock. As he takes a long drink, he checks the time—a little bit past three in the afternoon. He frowns, lowering his water bottle. Harley’s been having self defense lessons with Sam the past few days, starting a three on the dot. Maybe they cancelled today, but…

The back of his neck tingles and his stomach swoops so suddenly that he thinks he might be sick, which would suck because he hasn’t puked in four days and he was hoping that part of the healing process was over with, but before he can start to panic about finding something to puke in, his bracelet starts to vibrate where it’s sitting snugly around his wrist. Instantly, his eyes widen, water bottle slipping from his fingers and falling to the matted floor as he pays attention to the vibrations, mentally pulling up his memory of Morse code so that he’s prepared to figure out who it is that pressed the panic button.

Four quick buzzes, a pause, one quick buzz followed by a longer one—

_H A_

“Harley,” Peter breathes, having to swallow what he thinks is his heart lodged in his throat as his head whips up, finding Steve looking down at his own bracelet in alarm. Any resentment, any cold tone or harsh quip that Peter would usually say is quickly forgotten in his fear. “Is your—is he—?”

“He hit the big one,” Steve says. “Everyone got an alert.”

_That’s the big guns, alright?_ Peter remembers Tony telling them when he gave them their bracelets._ Only press it three times if there are aliens falling from the sky or some shit. I trust you guys to know the difference between a problem and an Avengers sized problem._

If Harley pressed the red button three times, if he’s calling out for the entire team…

“Friday,” Peter croaks, hands shaking. “Where’s Harley?”

Nothing.

“Friday,” Peter says again. _“Friday.”_

No response.

Silence.

And then, who knows how many floors below, a loud, ground shaking explosion.

If Harley’s being honest, it totally not fair, the fact that he’s being held hostage right now. He barely ever goes to the lower floors, but the _one fucking time_ that he decided to look in the intern labs to see what people are working on (because of curiosity and boredom) just happens to be the _one fucking time_ that someone manages to shut Friday down and attack Stark Tower like a bunch of _assholes._ Usually, he’d be upstairs, getting ready for his fourth self defense lesson with Sam and wondering what’s gonna be for dinner afterwards, but instead, he’s here, with a bunch of terrified college kids who were just trying to do their damn jobs.

“Why don’t you have a badge?” Pale Bitch—yes, Harley has given each of the intruders nicknames, if only to distract his own brain from the fact that he’s kind of terrified right now—asks for the third time in a row, the sneer audible in his voice despite a mask covering the lower half of his face. “Who are you?”

Harley rolls his eyes. “I already told you, dipshit. I live here.”

“Why would a teenager be living in Stark Tower?” Pale Bitch demands, still clearly not believing what Harley’s telling him. “What, are you some kind of secret love child or something?”

“I like to call myself a charity case, actually,” Harley quips, grinning in a way that hopefully hides the way his hands are shaking by his sides. “Some kind of pseudo son to a billionaire, maybe.”

Pale Bitch narrows his eyes, keeps his gun pointed at Harley’s head as he takes a step forward. “You trying to say you know Tony Stark?” Harley just shrugs. The gun gets shoved closer to his face, nudges against his nose while Pale Bitch shoves Harley back against the wall. “Answer me!”

“Knowing him is an understatement, man,” Harley says, trying to lean away from the barrel of the weapon but not having enough room to do so. “Did you miss the part where I called myself a pseudo son and told you that I lived here? Dude’s basically my dad. And, buddy, I hate to break it to you, but he’s a protective kind of parent and he’s gonna kick your ass for waving that thing in my face. And that’s, like, best case scenario for you, too. If my boyfriend gets here before Tony, you’re gonna need surgery.”

It looks like Pale Bitch is about to curse him out again when another one of the intruders approaches, and Harley quickly dubs this person with the name Dumb Shoes when he sees that they’re wearing a pair of sneakers that are a ugly, puke-y shade of green. Dumb Shoes pushes Pale Bitch in the shoulder, the action light but seemingly still meant to be aggressive, before saying, “We’re setting it up here.”

Pale Bitch blinks, apparently shocked. “Here? I thought we were going as far up as we could.”

“Stairwells and emergency exits have all be secured,” Dumb Shoes says. “With his tech tampered, his suits aren’t usable. We’re twenty floors from the top. They won’t be able to get out.”

Really, it’s an accident, the way Harley snorts. He tries to smother it, to keep it quiet, but it’s laughable, how stupid these people are. Sure, they were somehow able to tamper with Friday without her being able to detect it, but they really think they’re clever enough to outsmart a literal genius? The only person on this planet that’s smarter than Tony is the god damn Princess of Wakanda. These idiots clearly underestimate just how tech savvy Tony really is. Friday is built into the suits individually. Her being offline in the tower doesn’t mean the suits can’t be used. Christ, these people are dumb.

And _angry,_ clearly, he realizes when Dumb Shoes and Pale Bitch both level him with glares. “What are you laughing at?” Pale Bitch practically growls, leans in so close that Harley can smell whatever fruity gum they must have been chewing earlier, barrel of the gun now pressed to his temple.

“You,” Harley says, dumb mouth not knowing that this would be a good time to shut up. “Your idiocy, to be specific. Pretty obvious that y’all don’t know shit about Tony’s tech.”

Before Pale Bitch can sneer something else out, Dumb Shoes pushes him out of the way and swings, punches Harley hard enough to send him falling straight to the floor as the pain and dizziness clouds his vision. Thankfully, Dumb Shoes didn’t aim for the nose—if they had, it would have been broken, for sure, and he’s one of the poor bastards in this tower that doesn’t have enhanced healing. Not that having enhanced healing makes it hurt less, but it sure will hurt for a whole lot longer.

Of course, being punched in the eye definitely isn’t a picnic, either, and he still feels dizzy when he says, _“Jesus,_ that fuckin’ hurt. Better hope it doesn’t bruise. Peter’ll be mad if you fuck up my pretty face.”

“Shut _up,”_ Dumb Shoes spits, and then one of those puke colored sneakers comes a lot closer when they kick him in the gut, making the air leave his lungs suddenly, painfully. He tries to think of what to do, how to defend himself, but all him and Sam have covered so far is the basics of hand to hand combat. Nothing about being a hostage that’s getting their ass beat has been brought up quite yet.

Thankfully, Harley’s able to seal his lips together this time, bites his tongue to stop from nervously rambling on any further. He’s already gonna have a black eye and a hellish bruise on his side, anyway. If he doesn’t keep quiet, he might end up with a broken rib or something, which would not be ideal.

The bright side is that none of the other hostages have been hit, though. They’re all across the room, huddled together and watching with wide eyes, but, other than being shoved away from their desks and into the corner, they haven’t been touched. Maybe Harley wouldn’t be too bad at this superhero stuff, then. The whole being glad that he’s the one getting hurt so long as no one else is thing seems to be popular with the Avengers, and definitely with Peter. Harley would fit right in on that front.

“Don’t let him move,” Dumb Shoes instructs. “The bomb will be ready in five minutes.”

Harley freezes, heart stuttering. _Bomb_. They have a _bomb._ A fucking _bomb,_ and Friday isn’t able to alert anyone about the situation, and—and he has no choice, really, but to press the panic button, after carefully maneuvering his hands into his lap and trying not to be too obvious as the nano tech melts away and reveals the two buttons there. People are in danger, he knows—people could die, people _will_ die if this bomb goes off, and that, he thinks, is a big enough threat to bring in the big guns.

As soon as Pale Bitch happens to avert his eyes, Harley pushes the red button three times, holds his breath and wishes there was a way to know for sure that the alert was sent. Just to be safe, he goes to press the button three more times, if only to help ease his anxiety a bit, but then Pale Bitch lurches, yelps, and he hears Dumb Shoes shout, “Don’t touch that!” in a loud, slightly panicked voice.

And chaos erupts all around him.

“Talk to me, Fri.”

Through the suit and connected to the comms, Friday says, “The device that caused the explosion seems to have malfunctioned and gone off too soon. Due to this malfunction, the device was not fully set up quite yet, and therefore caused a much smaller scale blast than what it would have been otherwise.”

With some kind of huff, Tony asks, “Is that a silver lining?”

“It’s good luck, Boss,” Friday informs him. “At full capacity, the bomb would have caused enough structural damage to possibly make the building collapse and would have resulted in many deaths. As it is, there is very little damage, only contained to the seventy fifth floor. Unfortunately, with my systems within the tower compromised, I am unable to provide a more in depth scan to search for injuries, but my calculations predict that there should be little to no casualties and only minor injuries.”

“Mr. Stark,” Peter says, voice a bit crackly and uneven through the comms. “You have to let me—”

Tony makes a buzzer noise, eyes narrowed despite not being able to see the kid, gaze focused on scanning the building from the outside, where he’s circling it in his suit, to find the best point of entry. “You’re still healing, Pete,” he says firmly. “Stay in the safe room. And get off the comms.”

Surprisingly, Steve speaks up, saying, “Tony, I think he’s ready.”

“Yeah, didn’t ask, Spangles,” Tony sneers, making his way towards a window on the floor above where the blast came from. All the entry points on floor seventy five are compromised, so this will have to do. “You got eyes on the situation yet?”

“Stark,” Steve says, a bit more firm, a no bullshit tone to his voice. “I’ve been training with him every day for the past week and I’ve spoken in depth to Helen about his condition. I’m not saying he should fight, but he has a stealth advantage that none of us have. I can get close enough to hear, but I can’t get close enough to see anything, but Peter can. You need to let him help. It’s the easiest way to know what it looks like in there and if it’s safe to go inside.”

Grinding his teeth, Tony goes to argue, when Sam cuts in to say, “Cap’s right, Tony. There’s too much smoke to get any sort of drone in there to see anything, and all the windows are blocked out, so we can’t even see anything from the outside. We could take the time to come up with another idea, or we can let the kid do his wall crawling thing and let us know what’s going on.”

Again, Tony goes to argue, but then it’s Peter talking, pleading, “Harley’s in there, Mr. Stark. I can’t—I can’t just sit in a safe room and do nothing when I can help. You have to let me help. Please. _Please.”_

A moment of silence, and then, reluctantly: “Fine. But you’re only going in to look. Nothing else. Deal?”

“Yes,” Peter breathes. “Deal. Thank you.”

“Be safe, kid,” Tony says. “No matter what, just—just be safe.”

It comes down to this:

His best friend, or the kids that absolutely despise him.

The speed in which things escalate are surprising, considering that this, in comparison to other things, is not a very big deal. This isn’t Ultron, or the Accords, or an alien invasion. This is a group of people who hate the Avengers and decided to infiltrate Start Tower just to try and bomb them—a group so significantly unprepared that they accidentally set the bomb off too soon and ruined their own plans.

However, some of these people, they’re angry, they’re furious. One of them, a bigger, bulkier guy with a cut on his forehead that’s dripping blood into his left eye, sneers venomously at anyone who tries to leave the room, shoots a poor intern in the thigh when she tries to run for it, and Peter, who’s managed to go undetected in the corner of the ceiling and is relaying the situation into the comms as quietly as he can, jumps in when the gun goes off, shoves the guy back and webs away his gun and doesn’t have enough time to defend himself when another guy swings at him, knocks him so hard in the temple that he vision blurs and his stomach lurches. Harley is somewhere in the gathering of hostages, but Peter didn’t have time to find him, is only comforted by the simulation of Harley’s heartbeat against his wrist when he double taps the panel of his bracelet to connect them and assure him that Harley’s alive.

There are three bodies, either dead or close to it—the people who were standing closest to the bomb when it went off. None of them are interns and none of them are Harley, so Peter swallows back a lump in his throat and pushes himself to his feet to fight back, but, with his hour and a half training and the punch to the head and the fact that he still isn’t fully healed, his body already feels heavy with the need to rest. Still, he blocks the next hit, fights back with his shaky limbs, ignores the various voices coming through the comms telling him to leave before his body gives out and he can’t fight back anymore.

And it’s going to happen, he knows—his knees are about to buckle, his arms feel like they weight ten tons when he lifts them, his punches don’t land where they’re meant to, and his vision starts to double, but he can’t just stop, can’t run away to nurse his wounds when there’s an intern bleeding from a gun shot wound and various innocent people with their own injuries that need to be attended to. He heals fast, and they don’t. It’s as simple as that, really.

So, he pushes, counts down the seconds until he won’t be able to anymore, and—

Bucky is there.

That’s what they find, when Tony and Steve finally burst into the room, Wanda and Nat and Sam hot on their heels. Spider-Man is a trembling mess of weak limbs on the floor, and Bucky Barnes stands over him protectively, wearing a glare that’s more terrifying than any look he was able to conjure up as the Winter Soldier and directing it at the dozens of guys pointing guns at him.

It comes down to this:

Selfish, or selfless.

Really, Steve has always considered himself selfless, but when it comes to Bucky, he’s as selfish as they come. He turned his back on the Avengers for Bucky. He would do anything for Bucky.

(“You’re so young,” he had told Peter, after their third training session, just a few days ago. Peter had been grinning at his phone as he texted Harley, and Steve was still so unsure of what to think of their relationship, the two of them a mystery in his head. “I’m not trying to judge. I just… I don’t get it.”

“There’s nothing to get,” Peter had responded, a bit dead toned and cold but not exactly seething with anger like he usually would be around Steve. “I’d do anything for him. You can understand that, right?”

And, Steve supposed, he could.)

“I got this,” Bucky tells him, out of breath and struggling as he fights off four guys at once, barely dodges bullets that go flying through the room. Nat and Sam have already managed to usher the hostages out of the room while the bad guys were so focused on Bucky and Peter—save for Harley, who’s leaning against the wall with a sprained ankle and a black eye and a gaze that won’t move away from where Peter is still on the floor, too tired to even stand. Steve thinks Bucky is lying, feels fear clench in his chest when a bullet grazes Bucky’s real arm and blood drips to the floor. Tony is fighting off a handful of other guys, and Sam has his own group, too, and the rest are fighting with Nat and Wanda, who are standing between the weapons and Harley. “I _got this,”_ Bucky says again, when Steve doesn’t move. “Get him, Steve.”

_Him. Get him, get him, get—_

“Get Peter out of here!” Tony yells, then curses, angrily spits something at the guy who tries to aim a gun in Spider-Man’s direction and grumbles about the fact that Rhodey and Vision just had to take an impromptu trip to DC for a few days and are missing out on all the fun.

“No,” Peter says, not audible over the gunfire and the fighting but clear as day through the comms. He sounds like he’s barely awake, and Steve sees as he tries to get to his feet. “No, I can—I can—”

Bucky steps in front of Peter when someone tries to charge as him, knocks away the guys gun and knocks him out in one forceful swing. “Steve! Get them out of here!”

It comes down to this:

Steve’s heart, or Peter and Harley.

An impossible choice that he only has seconds to make.

“I can—” Peter tries to say again, before his arms give out. “I can—”

And then Steve moves.

In the aftermath, Tony approaches him, an ice pack to his cheek and a wrist brace on, but otherwise unharmed. He’s a little tense and stoic and awkward and he doesn’t look Steve in the eyes, but he says, “Thank you, for… for getting them out of there.” He casts a look over his shoulder, where Peter is conked out and snoring and Harley is leaning his head against Peter’s shoulder, both of them with their scrapes and their bruises clear as day. “They’re stubborn,” Tony says. “Never consider their own safety.”

“I would never let them die,” Steve states, and it’s simple and true and to the point.

“You wanted to stay with Barnes,” Tony points out. He doesn’t look away from Harley and Peter. “I could see it, when I looked over. You wanted to stay with him and make sure he didn’t get hurt, but you left him and helped them instead, and… I won’t lie, Rogers. I thought you’d choose Barnes over anything. You chose him over the team, over the law, over… over everything, before, you know?”

It’s not an exaggeration, and Steve knows this, so he doesn’t try to dispute it, only gives half a shrug and looks at the floor and tries not to move his arm too much, right shoulder still a bit sore from being dislocated and then popped back into place. “They’re good kids,” is all he offers.

Tony looks at him, then, scrutinizing and careful. “Romanov just said the same thing when I thanked her.”

“It’s hard not to think that they’re good kids,” Steve says. “Even if they do hate me.”

“They don’t hate you,” Tony sighs, and, slowly, takes the seat next to Steve, though he doesn’t look fully comfortable with sitting there. “They’ve both lost a lot, and… and, somehow, I got lucky enough to be a constant in their lives, and they seem to want to keep me around, so, knowing what you—what you did in Siberia, knowing that, if Friday hadn’t sent an alert to Pepper when my suit went offline, then I could have… well, they just—they’re protective. And they’re scared, even if they won’t admit it.”

Steve considers this for a long moment, flicks his eyes over to where Bucky is still cleaning up a bloody nose, looks at Harley and Peter, then settles his gaze on Tony. “I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s not planned, it’s not with a purpose in mind, not with the intentions or hopes of fixing anything. It’s just what he feels, so it’s what he says. “For everything, what I said during the Battle of New York, for how all of us, but especially how I treated you during Ultron, for the Accords. I’m sorry, Tony.”

It looks like Tony didn’t hear him, no reaction in his eyes, on his features, but then he sighs a bit, nods some, and says, “I know. You and Nat, both of you… I know you’re sorry, and I don’t forgive you, I don’t know if I can, but… but I can move on, maybe try to start over. Now that I have a little bit of faith that you won’t put my family in danger, it might be easier to try and… and put a little trust in you again.”

A lump forms in Steve’s throat that he struggles to swallow down, eyes sweeping across the room until he finds Nat, dabbing at her busted lip with some kind of satisfaction shining in her gaze. She smiles at him, the action slight, and nods. _Small steps,_ she mouths to him.

_Small steps,_ he thinks. _And maybe some big ones, too._

“You don’t have to pretend you actually trust me because of this,” Steve says. “Just… maybe give me the chance to work for it, so that I can earn it back. Both of us, if that’s okay.”

Tony purses his lips, squints a bit as he glances between Steve and Nat, Steve and Nat, and then he huffs out some kind of airy half laugh and he says, “I think I can do that.”

And it’s not much—it’s not a fix, because this isn’t something that can really be fixed, and it doesn’t change what happened—but it’s_ something,_ a slab of cement put down for the foundation of a bridge that needs to be rebuilt. It’s the first real step towards making things better.

It’s more than they deserve, but, as they share another smile from across the room, Steve and Natasha both know that it’s something they’ll work their asses off for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay! so! i have a question for u guys!
> 
> i'm going to be posting a halloween and a christmas one shot for this series, even though both holidays are over, but i'm already going to be posting a flash centric one shot that is going to lead into a really big plot thing for flash in this series. his one shot will kind of cover what the halloween and christmas one shots will cover, too, but it'll be from his pov, whereas the actual one shots will be from not flash's pov, and it won't be as detailed. i have the flash one shot about? 4k words deep right now, and the halloween and christmas one shots are both only like 1k, maybe 2k words each so far.
> 
> basically, would u prefer i finish the halloween one shot and the christmas one shot and post those first, so that the flash one shot doesn't really lowkey spoil them? because i can do that, but it'll take longer because that's two one shots that i've barely started that i need to finish, which means there'd be a bigger gap before i update this series because i want those three one shots to be posted before i start the next multi chaptered fic. or, is it okay if i post the flash one shot first, since that one's much closer to being done, and then just post the halloween and the christmas one shots whenever i get them done despite them being posted in non-chronological order?
> 
> hopefully that question makes sense, i'm very sleepy and inarticulate at the moment, lol
> 
> anyway, hope u enjoyed this last chap! it's not a "welcome back to the family" but it is a "the family is willing to let you earn a spot" and that's definitely a big step up from where steve and nat were before!! happy new year, everyone!!! sorry there's very little parkner in this chapter but i didn't really know how to add it in without disrupting the flow of the chapter, so ???? whoops.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is spidey-lad pls interact w me im lonely


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